We are here
by elanev91
Summary: James Potter has just swept into the Premiership on a wave of Brexit outrage and, on his first night in office, a woman strolls out of his fire and tells him she's the Minister for Magic. She tells him not to worry, he'll never see her again unless something really serious happens. It goes, perhaps, without saying, that something really serious happens.
1. Chapter 1

**'His skin is familiar as my own beneath my fingers. I listen to his breath, warm upon the night air, and somehow I am comforted. He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.' - _Circe_, Madeline Miller**

**I honestly feel a little pretentious starting off with a quote, but good god, _Circe_ is brilliant and you all should read it. **

**Thanks, as always, to my wonderful friends who read this fic at its various stages of completion, who listened to me bang on about it when it wasn't working, who listened to me scream completely incomprehensible things when it was going well. I would, honestly, implode without them.**

**After this surprise Friday afternoon chapter, I'll be posting twice a week on the weekends - probably two chapters on Saturday morning unless that doesn't work out for us for some reason. **

**I hope you enjoy this story. I hope it isn't obnoxious to say it, but I'm quite proud of who these characters turned out to be.**

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The first time he saw her, he honestly wasn't sure that she was real.

And not in a romantic, his heart started hammering, the world stuttered to a halt under his feet, and everything ceased to exist kind of way. In a his painting talked to him and his fire turned green and a woman stepped out of it and _he had to be fucking hallucinating, right_, kind of way.

It was a figment of his imagination, a product of stress and exhaustion and under-caffeination.

And he _had_ been under an inordinate amount of stress lately. He'd been working constantly, literally non-stop, since the general election had been triggered in January, had been travelling up and down the country and giving speeches and interviews and writing guest columns for the papers in an effort to whip up votes. He'd barely gotten any sleep for two months and then, come March, they'd won the election and finally, _finally, _taken Parliament back from the bloody Tories and then he'd gotten swept up in the insanity of the change in government and then, on top of it all, he was hit by the realisation of about a million things earlier that day when he first walked through the door of Number 10 — the realisation that the British people were trusting him to navigate them out of the most difficult political situation they'd been in in decades, that his government was teetering on a political knifepoint and he was going to have to remain on his guard all the time.

He knew that what they were doing, or what they were planning on doing, was the right thing — they wouldn't have been elected if it wasn't — but he also knew that there was going to be heavy opposition the moment he stepped through those doors, that he was going to have to fight tooth and nail to make sure that he was able to effect the change he'd promised the voting public if they were to put him in power.

The importance of this moment, of his government, settled heavily on him that morning when he walked across the pavement to Downing Street, but he'd squared his shoulders and straightened his spine as he crossed the threshold because he refused to be cowed by this.

He was determined, absolutely determined, to set all of this right.

No amount of political opposition or fear or difficulty was going to stop them.

They had a small margin for error, but James was confident. He believed in his team, his government. Himself.

But now, here he was, standing in his office in the middle of the night in his first night in Number 10 and his mind was making him see a woman stepping out of his fireplace and James' belief in himself started to waver a bit.

Because honestly. She wasn't real.

She wasn't real because she couldn't _be_ real.

Except then she pulled out a stick and waved it over herself and the ash on her long cloak disappeared.

Except then she smiled at him.

'Prime Minister.' She moved the stick to her left hand as she stepped across the room, right hand extended for a handshake. He reached up and took her hand, but it was more out of shock than anything else, a force of habit.

Nothing was registering. Nothing.

Not even the dark, rich red of her hair or the vibrant, shining green of her eyes or the light smattering of freckles across her cheeks.

Nothing.

'I'm Lily Evans,' she dropped his hand after a moment and crossed the room to hang her coat on the hook beside his door. James watched, his mind still blank with shock, as she turned and he took in her outfit — a plain, normal-looking suit set. She looked —

She didn't look like someone that had just popped out of his bloody grate. She didn't look like someone who would be stuffing a _stick _into the interior pocket of her blazer.

And yet —

She seemed to understand the effect she was having on him because her smile widened a bit as she stepped forward and sat in the chair opposite his desk.

Before he really thought about why he was doing it, James mimicked her and sat in his own chair.

They sat quietly for a moment, this "Lily" staring calmly at him, her expression cool and even, while James' mind stuttered through a number of trains of thought before he finally decided which was the most pressing.

Or, at least, which line of questioning he thought he might be able to handle the answer to.

'Uh — I'm sorry, Ms Evans, but —' he tried to lean back in his chair, grin easily, but he was sure it was more of an awkward grimace. 'I'm not sure I know who you are.'

She crossed her legs, rested her folded hands on her knee, and James noted the hint of a smile tugging at her lips again. 'I'm the Minister for Magic.'

He blinked. Minister….

'I'm sorry — ' He shook his head as though the action would erase the nonsense she'd just fucking said. 'You're _what?'_

She smiled at him, a kind of soft, pitying smile. 'The Minister for Magic. Like the Prime Minister for Britain's wizarding community.'

'W-wizarding community?'

Her smile widened. 'Yes. We don't exactly go around publicising our existence, though, so it's perfectly natural to be confused.'

'But you —' James started shaking his head. 'You're just having me on. Ha ha, very funny, which one of my stupid friends thought this would be hilarious?'

He grabbed a bunch of random papers from the far corner of his desk and looked up at her as he started tapping them into a neat stack.

She arched her eyebrow at him.

'You really think I'm just having you on?'

There was something about her smile — the way it hitched slightly higher on the right, the way it perfectly matched the challenging arch in her eyebrow — and he knew that he shouldn't press someone who was looking at him like they were perfectly ready to take him up on whatever stupid thing he was offering, but this was —

She'd strutted into his office and started talking about _magic. _It wasn't real.

He'd have to figure out how they did that thing with the fire and the picture, but _it wasn't real._

'Go stand over there.' She pointed to the far corner of his office and he frowned, crossed his arms over his chest.

'Don't start bossing me around my own office —'

She sighed. 'Just go stand in that corner.'

He had half a mind to snap at her again, but then she reached inside her jacket pocket and pulled out the stick again.

James immediately got to his feet and moved into the corner.

'You ready for my proof?' She rolled the stick around casually in her fingers and James swallowed nervously.

'What are you going to do?'

He thought he saw the ghost of a smile on her face as she rolled the stick once more before she grasped it firmly. 'Nothing that'll cause any lasting damage.'

James cringed internally. The number of times he'd heard _that _before —

She flicked the stick lightly, lazily, and James' entire desk burst into flames.

His —

'What the _fuck _—'

She moved the stick again and his desk went out.

It looked —

What the _fuck_?!

'How —' He walked over and touched the papers, the perfectly white, unburnt papers, on top of his desk, ran his fingers over the wood that was, somehow, cool to the touch. His eyes snapped to hers and he definitely — _definitely _— saw the smile on her face that time.

'How in the _fuck _did you do that?!'

She quirked an eyebrow at him. '"How"?' She considered him, the smile tugging higher on her lips. 'I have to say, I wasn't expecting "how". Last time it was "why in the world would you set my bloody desk on fire".'

His jaw dropped. 'You've set _another _desk on fire?'

'This same desk, actually.' She leaned forward and patted the wood like she was patting a dog. 'For your last Prime Minister.'

'You —' The significance of what she said clicked and he felt himself start to smile. 'You did this to May?'

She half shrugged, but there was something about her expression that told James she was pleased with herself. It was _too _even, too controlled — it reminded him of his own expression when he landed some jab in Parliament and he couldn't very well celebrate it on the floor.

'I'm only disappointed that I didn't get to do the bloke before her. Think of all the possibilities. I could've turned the desk into a talking pig or something.'

James barked a laugh. 'God, that would've been bloody perfect, wouldn't it?'

Lily nodded. 'I like to think so.'

'But —' James took a deep breath. 'Seriously. How did you do that?'

'I told you.' She opened her jacket and slipped the stick back into the interior pocket. 'Magic.'

'I — Alright.' He pulled his chair out and sat down. 'If this is all real, why didn't Theresa tell me about this? Or David? I know we're not exactly _chummy, _but —'

Lily raised an eyebrow at him again. 'Are _you _going to tell anyone about this?'

'I — I mean, I don't know. I'd have liked to know that a woman was going to step out of my fireplace and then set my desk on fire, yes.'

'So you're going to tell the next Prime Minister, whoever they are, that on your first night in Number 10, a woman came into your office and claimed to be the Minister for Magic and lit your desk on fire to prove it?'

'I —'

It sounded absolutely fucking mad when she said it like that, didn't it?

Lily's smile widened as she watched him mull it over, and when he finally shook his head and said, 'No, I guess not,' she finally smiled at him fully.

'Knew you'd get there in the end.'

'So you're — explain this to me. Who are you? What is this _wizarding community_? How many wizards are there in Britain?'

'I'm the Minister for Magic. Basically, I'm the Prime Minister of our government.'

'You have a _government_?'

Lily laughed. 'Of course we have a government. And be grateful we do. Things would be completely mad if we didn't.'

'There'd be people setting desks on fire left, right, and bloody centre,' James grumbled.

She laughed again and James, no matter how confused he was, decided that he really, really liked making her laugh.

'I'm the head of the government,' she said, and she sat up just a bit straighter in her chair. It was barely detectable, the movement, because her posture was already nearly perfect, but James recognised the movement well. It was the lift, the strength you get when you take on positions like theirs, the way that you carry yourself differently because you know just how much it matters.

She was proud, so proud.

And that — if the desk hadn't already proven it — would have convinced him.

'I was elected,' she said, 'so we differ there, but otherwise, our roles are effectively the same.'

'So you've got a legislature?'

Lily nodded. 'And courts and such. If you just take your government and fill it with wizards, you've basically got ours. We've got a few different departments, of course, and our structure is a _bit _different, but otherwise, as I've said, we're effectively the same.'

James nodded slowly. 'And how large is the wizarding community? Are we completely surrounded and I've just never known?'

Lily hummed noncommittally. 'There are a fair few wizards in your world,' she said, 'but for the most part, we tend to keep to our own.'

'Who's in our world?'

Lily smiled. 'Do you know Ted Tonks? BBC News?'

James' eyes widened. 'Is he a wizard?'

Lily nodded. 'We were in school together. He was in a different house, but we knew one another pretty well.'

That opened up a whole host of questions for him, but he needed to focus.

'So, there are a few thousand? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?' He could hear himself getting progressively more anxious, and he took a deep breath to try and recover himself.

'Oh, god, no,' Lily waved a hand. 'There are a few thousand wizards in Britain. The global population is larger, obviously, but we don't really need to worry you about that.'

Global….

Okay, no. They weren't worrying about that.

He wasn't responsible for all of those people and so he was not going to worry about that.

'So, alright.' He took a deep breath. 'You're the Minister for Magic. There's an entire magical government that none of us know anything about and there are thousands of magical people in Britain that somehow live here in secret?'

She nodded.

James exhaled hard as he leaned back in his chair and reached up underneath his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose.

'I have to say, you're taking this much better than your predecessor.'

He looked up at her over top his fingers before he dropped his hand back into his lap. 'Am I now?'

She nodded. 'May had a very hard time believing that I was telling the truth. Almost called 999 on me, she did.'

'Even after the desk?'

'Ever after the desk.'

'Well, I don't see why you'd come in here and create this elaborate of a ruse just to fuck with me,' James said. 'Granted, I _should _expect that this is a joke because my brother has been known to pull some pretty elaborate things, but…. I don't know, I just believe you.'

'Well, thank you for making my life easier.'

He tipped his head towards her. 'I live to serve.'

She held his gaze for a moment, a smile _almost _on her lips, before her expression cleared and she cleared her throat. 'Well, let's get down to business, shall we?'

James raised an eyebrow at her. 'We have business?'

'Not strictly speaking,' Lily said. 'We're not going to have regular meetings or anything of that sort. I just need to give you a brief overview of what to expect from our relationship moving forward.'

James leaned back in his chair. 'And what relationship should I expect, Minister?'

'A non-existent one, I hope.'

James hoped that he didn't look as disappointed as he suddenly felt. 'Oh?' He smirked playfully at her in an effort to further conceal his disappointment. 'And why is that?'

'If you don't see any more of me, that means that everything is going well. So, trust me, you don't want to be seeing any more of me, either.'

'What sorts of things would you have to pop by for?' He wanted to know just how bad it needed to be before she thought it was worth a visit to Downing Street. Not because he _wanted _it to be bad, of course, but because he wanted to know what he could expect from her should he see her stepping out of his grate at some point in the future.

'I'd really only need to see you if we were in the middle of something that was likely to disrupt or otherwise impact the Muggle population. When we were having those issues with the dragons in the West Country a few years ago, for instance. We had to reach out to… I believe it was Gordon Brown, then?'

James must have blanched because she smiled reassuringly. 'Don't worry, we haven't had any dragon-related issues in over a decade. We've got some of the best dragonologists in the world. And anyway, there aren't so many out there now. We've had to install a number of protective measures in recent years to ensure the population is preserved. That's cut down on the Muggle exposure, too.'

'I —' James shook his head slowly. 'Dragons?'

She waved a hand. 'Seriously, don't worry about the dragons. If I come and see you again, it's more likely to be a wizard-related problem than a magical creature one.'

James nodded slowly. 'So, where would you say we're at in terms of potential future visits? Anything on the horizon that I need to worry about?'

He expected her to immediately say no, but she was quiet for a second before she finally replied.

'No,' she said. 'Nothing you need to worry about right now.'

James sat quietly for a moment and studied her. There was something about her hesitancy, something that made him think she wasn't being entirely truthful, but her expression was calm and even and, if she was lying or telling him a partial truth, she was remarkably good at it.

He was just about to open his mouth to say as much, maybe goad her into giving a little more away, when she cleared her throat.

'Well,' she stood and smoothed her hands down the front of her trousers and James tried not to follow the motion with his hands, 'it's been lovely chatting with you, Prime Minister, but I really must be getting back to the Ministry. And I hope you don't take it the wrong way when I say that I hope we don't have reason to meet again.'

James watched as she crossed the room and grabbed her long cloak from the hook beside his door, followed the fabric as it draped over her shoulders.

He shook his head mutely, cleared his throat. 'No. No, not offended at all.'

She smiled at him and reached into her pocket, pulled out a bit of something that looked like dust. He was just about to ask her what in the _world _she was doing with that in her pocket when she tossed it into the fire and the orange flames immediately turned green.

He expected her to stride right in, to leave his office the same way she'd arrived — calmly, swiftly, professionally. Like walking out of people's grates was something she did every day.

But she turned towards him again, and there was something in her expression that gave James pause, something that settled heavily in his chest. He couldn't describe it, couldn't say exactly what it was, but he could tell that it wasn't a feeling that would be easily shifted.

She smiled, then, a soft, gorgeous smile. It was short, barely a glimmer, but it had completely stopped his heart.

'Good night, Prime Minister.'

His throat was tight, inexplicably so, and he swallowed hard against it. 'Good night.'

He thought she might hesitate again, might stand there a bit longer, might say something else. He thought she might stay, but she turned on her heel the moment he bid her goodnight and stepped into the fire and, in one whirling moment, she was gone.

It was only a few months before he saw her again.

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**Find me on tumblr! Same username x**


	2. Chapter 2

**The outpouring of love and excitement yesterday was overwhelming in the best way. I can't even begin to express how grateful I am to have all of you in my life. I hope you continue to enjoy this story and I'll see you with two more chapters next Saturday xx**

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It had been a long day, that Wednesday. It was the middle of September, just a few weeks out from Parliamentary recess, and PMQs had been tougher that day than he honestly cared to continue thinking about.

It had started with a rambling, confusing question from John Denison about Birmingham and the bloody Commonwealth Games that hadn't seemed like a question at all and had totally wrongfooted him in his response because, really, _this _was what they were talking about this morning? When they had a million other more important things to be sorting out? And then he'd given a shakey answer to bloody Basil Ashford about the bloody referendum — an annoyingly shakey answer, honestly, because he'd _had _the figures in front of him just that morning and he'd gotten so goddamn emotional in his response that he couldn't get it out right — and then it had all gone downhill. It had devolved into a lot of shouting about how maybe someone of his _standing _wasn't ready to lead a government, least of all a government that was trying to navigate the biggest mess they'd seen since the war— a mess "his government had created" because they were "ignoring the will of the people" and "had fast-tracked a bill that needed to be given full consideration" — and, by the end of it all, James was just barely keeping it together as he filed out of the Commons that afternoon.

And then he'd had an absolutely ridiculous row with Dorcas Meadowes, his Foreign Secretary, and she'd been right — honestly, she had been — but he'd been so bloody upset by the time their meeting had come late that afternoon that instead of talking through everything they'd needed to talk through, he'd ended up snapping at her and she — rightfully — had ended up shouting at him.

Poor Margot, his Chief of Staff, had thought someone was trying to kill them in there and she'd nearly had a heart attack getting from one end of Downing Street to the other.

All told, it had been an absolutely shit day.

He was still sitting at his desk gone eleven when the portrait on the wall — the one he'd caught himself staring at fairly often over the last few months — cleared it's throat and James jumped with fright.

Thank christ he hadn't been holding a cup of tea — spilling _that _all over his laptop really would've been the cherry on top of his fucking day.

'Is the Prime Minister willing to see the Minister for Magic?'

'Bloody hell,' James frowned at the picture as he pushed himself up out of his chair and re-buttoned the top button on his jacket. 'You really should warn me if you're going to start talking.'

The portrait didn't seem to take the reprimand. 'The Minister for Magic is arriving now.'

James walked back around the desk as the fire turned bright green and barely kept his smile in check as Lily appeared behind the grate. She didn't look up at him as she stepped out, just kept her eyes trained on her shoes as she lifted her wand — was it _safe _for her to be holding it like that when she was in the fire? — and siphoned the ash off herself.

She looked up at him as soon as she finished and there was a set about her face that made James a bit nervous.

'Prime Minister.' She stuck her hand out as she crossed the room and James smiled as he shook.

'Just James, please. No need to be so formal.'

She didn't smile back. She just nodded.

James cleared his throat. 'Please, make yourself at home. Unless you're just popping by for a quick chat?'

Lily undid the fasteners on her cloak and stuffed the wand into the interior pocket before she slid it down off her shoulders. 'Unfortunately, I'm here for more than a quick chat.' She looked up and caught his eye as she hung up her coat and there was definitely something in her expression that James didn't like.

He gestured towards the chair across from his desk. 'You're welcome to sit there again, or,' he pointed towards the pair of armchairs he'd had brought into the office a few weeks ago, 'we could sit there. Wherever you like, really.'

She settled herself in the armchair closest to the fire without a moment's hesitation and looked expectantly at him when he didn't move immediately to join her. James, though, was desperate to delay this conversation and to make up for all the things he'd forgotten to do the last time she'd been here.

'Can I get you a cup of tea? I haven't got fancy china or anything, but the mugs are alright. And, you know, I'm sorry I forgot to ask last time, I was just —' He waved his hand. 'The shock.'

There must have been something charming about his rushed, anxious tone, because her tense expression faded as she breathed a laugh and waved him off. 'I understand. But yes, a cup of tea would be lovely.'

He'd had his Office Manager bring in a small cart for the corner of his office back in August (when he'd finally convinced her that _yes _he could make his own tea and that, _yes, _it absolutely was a waste of her valuable time to be brewing him a cuppa every five minutes), and he could just see Lily out of the corner of his eye as he pressed the kettle down onto the base and set about preparing their mugs.

The lighter, easier look she'd had a moment ago was gone and she'd settled back into the darker, tenser expression she'd had when she'd first stepped out of the fire. There was a weariness to her expression that he hadn't remembered from the first time he'd seen her — she'd been serious, her looks had always had a certain weight about them, but this, whatever had brought her here today, looked like it was dragging on her.

And lord, did he know the feeling.

He turned around. His movement must have caught her eye because she smoothed her expression immediately and looked up at him expectantly.

'Tea bags alright?' He meant to stop there, but he just carried on rambling. 'I've got a soft spot for the ol' PG Tips and I'm the only one that ever drinks tea out of this office, really, so — but I think my Office Manager has some better tea somewhere if you'd —'

Why he couldn't control his mouth when she was around, he would never know.

Lily tipped her head like she was considering him. 'Do I strike you as someone who would scoff at a tea bag?'

'I —' Lily raised an eyebrow at him and he faltered. 'No?'

She laughed again and James felt his heart swell in his chest. This was — _god _he was pathetic.

She was here because something had gone wrong — at least, that's what she'd told him to expect if he ever saw her again — and here he was, smiling and flirting like an idiot.

He needed to get himself together.

The kettle clicked off and James used the excuse to turn around and keep from digging himself in any further. He poured water into each of their mugs and cast a quick look at her over his shoulder.

'How do you take it?'

'Strong enough to stand a spoon in and a bit of milk if you've got it. Otherwise, I'll just take it black.'

James nodded. 'I'll just run down the hall and grab some. I'll be right back.'

'Oh, no, you don't —' Lily started, but James was already across the room and out the door before she finished her sentence.

She was frowning when he walked back in a minute later, the litre of milk in his hands. 'You really didn't need to do that,' she said as he lifted her teabag out and dumped a measure of milk into her mug. 'Without would've been fine.'

'I'd rather you have your tea how you like it,' James said, lifting it carefully off the tray and crossing over to hand it to her. 'And really, it wasn't so inconvenient. It's not like I had to run out to Tesco.'

James dropped a heaping spoonful of sugar into his own tea and stirred it quickly before he crossed the room again and settled into the chair beside hers. He took a slow sip — exhaled hard against the heat — and looked up to find Lily watching him.

She really had gorgeous eyes.

He cleared his throat. 'So, what can I do for you today, Evans?'

She sighed heavily and set her mug onto her knee. 'Well, I expect you already have some idea of why I'm here.'

'I've got something I need to worry about?'

'I… wouldn't worry about it yet. Not really. It's just enough that I'm concerned and, in the interest of maintaining a strong relationship, I thought it best to keep you informed.'

James furrowed his brow. 'Okay?'

Lily sighed again. 'I should probably start by giving you a bit of background.'

James nodded and took another sip of his tea. 'That'd be helpful, yes.'

Lily took a long drink of her tea and stared blankly at her knees while she gathered her thoughts. He wasn't sure how much background there really was, so he couldn't tell if she was just trying to figure out where to start or if she was trying to decide how to spin it.

He wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, though, and say that she wasn't thinking about spin just then.

'We've — not always had the best relationship,' she said at long last. 'Our communities. It's been some years now, but, historically, there have been… factions in the wizarding community who seemed to think that wizards were somehow better than Muggles because we wave wands around. And that opinion tended to manifest itself in violence.'

James' eyes widened. 'Violence?'

Lily nodded. 'Yes. We've come a long way, but I won't pretend that the threat is entirely eliminated. As such, I want to assure you, before we go into anything else, that preventing this kind of violence from recurring is of the utmost importance for the Ministry. Our Department of Magical Law Enforcement has a team of highly trained officers whose sole purpose is monitoring, investigating, and capturing those suspected of committing these kinds of offenses. And, since I've gotten into office, I've increased the authority, scope, and size of our Muggle Liaison office.'

James couldn't think of anything to say to that. He had so many questions — what had happened before? What _exactly _had been done and how many people had been affected? Why had it been done at all? Would it happen again?

He had so many questions that he didn't know where to start.

Lily, though, seemed to interpret his silence as fear. She leaned across the arm of her chair, her expression fierce and determined. 'I assure you, Prime Minister. I am doing everything, absolutely everything, in my power to make sure that nothing like that ever happens again.'

The heat in her eyes — she absolutely fucking meant it.

James cleared his throat and nodded once. 'I trust you.'

She held his gaze for a moment, her expression still hard, intense, before it began to soften. 'Thank you.'

They sat there quietly for a moment, the heaviness still lingering between them. James wasn't at all sure, with a build up like that, where the rest of this conversation was going to go, but, frankly, he wasn't sure that he was going to like it.

He took a quick sip of his tea before he turned more fully in his seat.

'So what's brought you here today? What shouldn't I be completely worried about but apparently worried _you_ enough to bring you back to Downing Street in the middle of the night?'

'I —' Lily hesitated and James frowned. If she was hesitant —

Lily cleared her throat. 'Over the last few years, there've been… mutterings. Little opinion columns popping up in the paper, questions that come up at the Ministry, that sort of thing. It wasn't much, never anything overt, but it was enough to make the people in charge then a bit nervous that we might be headed back to where we'd been twenty five, thirty years ago.'

James nodded slowly and Lily took a deep breath before she continued. 'We'd hoped, when I got elected in 2016, that this would stop. After such a public display of support. But —'

'Were you pro… what did you call it? Muggle? Pro-Muggle?'

Something about his question made her smile. But it wasn't the soft, warm smile he'd seen sneak onto her lips a few times in their time together — it was a slightly sardonic one that confused the hell out of him.

She took a sip of her tea and her expression cleared. 'Sort of.'

He quirked an eyebrow at her.

'I'm Muggleborn,' she clarified. 'My parents aren't magical. I'm the only magical one in my family as far as I'm aware.'

James frowned. 'That can happen?'

She nodded. 'Rarely. But it does happen.'

'So….' There were so many things jockeying for position in his brain and he wasn't sure where to start. He wasn't sure what questions _mattered_, wasn't even sure what he needed to ask. He knew, though, that the long list of questions coming up about Lily — how did you first find out you were magical? What was that like? How did it change you and your family? — those questions were not what needed his focus at the moment.

'So, okay.' He leant back in his chair and propped his elbow up on the arm. 'You're Muggleborn and the people in your government hoped that your election meant the tide of public opinion against anti-Muggle sentiment was strong enough to shut down the movement that was starting to get legs?'

Lily tipped her head noncommittally. 'Yes… but I also think it had a lot to do with the fact that, prior to becoming Minister, I worked as the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.'

'You did?!'

'Yes.' Lily held his gaze for a moment before she took a long, slow sip of her tea. She set her mug down on her thigh and James cleared his throat.

'Were things bad enough that your law enforcement experience would have had a significant impact on the vote?'

She sighed. 'Remus doesn't think so. Remus is my senior undersecretary,' she clarified, seeing his confusion. 'He's of the opinion that I was elected because of a combination of factors, the primary one being, of course, that the people were ready for the kind of leadership I could provide.'

James hummed. 'You seem sceptical.'

'Hard not to be.'

James wanted to ask, but she waved the topic aside and carried on. 'Anyway. I want to be conscious of your time —'

'It's alright,' James said. 'I wasn't doing much anyway.'

She raised her eyebrow and James knew from the lightly amused look on her face that she didn't even remotely believe him.

'Even if that were true, I'd still like you to get some sleep. It's not easy, running a country.'

James grinned at her. 'Well, you would know, wouldn't you?'

She breathed a laugh and nodded. 'Exactly why you should take my advice on this.'

James rolled his eyes playfully. 'Alright then. As you were saying.'

The lightness that had temporarily softened her expression vanished instantly. She sighed heavily and turned her mug once in her hands before she seemed to think better of herself and her hands stilled. 'Where were we?'

'The election, I think.'

'Ah, yes. The Ministry was of the opinion, at the time of my election, that my assuming office meant there was significant public support of Muggles and Muggleborns and, as a result, those that were starting to cause trouble would… get the hint. Sort of stop on their own.

'And things did seem to quiet down for a while. The columns were fewer and farther between in the papers, and when they did show up, the language was more cleverly disguised. They asked questions about _safety_, magical safety in Muggle communities, all that sort of bollocks, and I've been around long enough to know how to read though the lines, but the rest of the Ministry —'

She looked down at the mug in her hands and James followed her gaze — her grip on the cup was so intense that her fingertips were white.

James watched as she slowly loosened her grip and colour flooded back into her fingers.

'The rest of the Ministry,' she looked back up at him, 'seemed the believe that the "no news is good news" approach was the best course of action.'

'I take it you disagreed.'

She laughed and, though James didn't quite get what was funny, he couldn't help but smile at her.

'To say I "disagreed" is to put it very generously.'

James cocked an eyebrow and the corner of Lily's lips twitched. 'Let's just say that a few people weren't very happy with me for a while.'

James hummed and smiled just slightly. 'What was the major contention?'

'I was of the mind that we should be doing extensive intelligence work, especially because we had a fairly reliable list of names with which to start. My replacement in Law Enforcement didn't agree, but he came round in the end.'

'And by "came round" you mean...?'

'That I told him it was that or he was out of a job.'

James hummed and took a slow sip of his tea. 'Can't imagine he liked that.'

Lily breathed a laugh and shook her head. 'For a lot of reasons.'

'So did your investigation turn up anything?'

She laughed again. 'Oh, of course. It was mostly intelligence gathering at that stage — very few arrests were made and, when they were, it was usually for unrelated things — but we now have a massive amount of intelligence that's been invaluable to our current investigations.'

She didn't say it, but James heard the "so, obviously I was right" in her tone.

'So what you're investigating now — that's what's brought you to my door tonight.'

'To your grate, yes.' She smiled at him for a moment (James shook his head, a smile of his own starting on his lips) before she sobered.

'Over the last few months, we've seen a sudden and sharp uptick in the amount of anti-Muggle activity. I want to emphasise that I'm really still not _that _concerned about this — it's still very mild things, but Arthur Weasley, the Head of our Muggle Liaison Office reached out this morning with his latest report and I wanted to bring this to your attention.'

James raised his eyebrows. He thought Lily might immediately carry on, but she took a long sip of tea instead. She set her mug on her knee and turned it once, slowly, in her hands before she looked back up at him.

'It's minor things, as I said. But, as I'm sure you're aware, it's the minor things that are our first indicator that something more sinister might be coming. Arthur's noticed a significant increase in the number of minor Muggle-baiting crimes over the last quarter — that includes anything from putting charms on someone's keys so they disappear, knowingly taking dangerous magical artefacts to shops where Muggles will encounter them, that sort of thing. No one in Law Enforcement seems particularly concerned about it, but I am. I've got a meeting with Crouch — the department head — on the books for tomorrow. But I wanted to bring this to you before it escalates to the point where it's making your news and you have to address it in Parliament.'

James' eyebrows shot up. 'Do you anticipate my having to talk about it in Parliament?'

'I… can't be sure at this stage,' she said, not quite looking at him. 'Right now? No.'

James hummed. 'So what am I going to do in the interim?'

'Well….' Lily turned the mug around in her hands again. 'It's my first priority to make sure you're informed.'

James breathed a laugh, but it was tense, tight. 'I'd like to be more than informed.' Lily's brow creased like she wasn't sure what he meant, so he clarified. 'I want to help.'

And though she didn't look entirely sold on the prospect, at least she didn't immediately turn him down. She tipped her chin up a bit as she replied. 'We can explore collaborative opportunities when the proper circumstances arise.'

James shook his head, a sardonic smile on his lips. 'You're not the first politician to try and peddle me that kind of nonsense, Evans.'

Her expression stayed perfectly even as she leant back in her chair. 'I'm not peddling anything, Potter.'

He studied her for a long moment, arguing with himself. He had half a mind, as he always did, to push her on this. To demand answers, demand more information, demand, at the very least, a promise that he could be involved in the action that, he was sure, was going on behind the scenes. But the calmer part of himself, the patient part, urged him to breathe. Breathe, and, for now, let it go.

It wasn't worth the fight. Not yet.

'Alright,' he leant back in his chair and half shrugged, barely repressing his exasperated sigh. 'We'll agree to disagree for now.'

She held his gaze for a minute, a look on her face that wasn't quite even but wasn't expressive either — it was just shy of both and he found himself, more than anything else, wondering what she was thinking about.

She nodded once. 'Fair enough.'

She took a long drink of tea and set her now empty mug down on her knee.

They were quiet for a minute, Lily looking down at her mug, James watching as Lily turned the mug slowly around in her hands. There was more, clearly, that she was mulling over, but he was also fairly sure that he wasn't going to get any of that out of her.

If anything, pressing the issue might only make her push him away entirely. And then he'd never see her again.

Or learn more about whatever it was that was happening in her Britain.

He cleared his throat and smiled easily when she looked up at him.

'Have you always got to come here in the middle of the night?' he asked, throwing back the rest of his tea before he stood up and held out his hand for her empty mug. Lily handed him her mug with a grateful smile and James busied himself with preparing them a fresh cup.

'It's mostly just when I can get the time in my own day,' she said. James leaned up against the bookshelf while he waited for the kettle to boil so he could look at her. 'And I'm sure your days are fairly busy as well. I'm not sure what it is you're up to all day, but I'm sure it's not nothing.'

James laughed and shook his head. 'No, it's certainly not nothing. It's just a lot of the same things over and over again, though, so, you know. It can feel like nothing when I'm in a particularly foul mood.'

Lily laughed and raised an eyebrow at him. 'I can't imagine you in a foul mood. You're always so pleasant.'

The kettle clicked and James shot her a wry smile before he turned and poured water into each of their mugs. 'Been imagining me have you?'

James didn't have to turn around to know that Lily had flushed. The tone of her voice when she said, 'Shut up,' was enough.

He flashed her a grin over his shoulder. 'Trust me, though. I'm not always pleasant. I was in a right state today, in fact. So you've picked a wonderful day to come and dump more news on my desk.'

'Well, I never would have known it from the look on your face when I walked in here.'

James didn't want to tell her that it was probably because he was too busy being excited that he was going to get to see her again.

She smiled her thanks as he handed her her mug and settled back into the chair beside hers. They were quiet, Lily looking down at her tea, James looking at her, and it was a minute before Lily cleared her throat and spoke again.

'What were you upset about?' He looked up at her and her forehead creased. 'If you don't mind my asking, that is. You obviously don't have to talk about it.'

James shook his head. 'No, it's alright. Not talking about it isn't going to make it go away, so I might as well.'

He paused, but Lily didn't seem to have anything to add.

He sighed and took a long, slow sip of his tea. 'So, I don't know how much you've been paying attention to our news —'

'Barely,' Lily interjected. He raised an eyebrow at her and she frowned. 'I know. But anyway, continue.'

'Well, alright, so two and a half years ago, Britain voted to leave the European Union, ah, okay, you knew that, and my predecessor was charged with coming up with a deal. She brought back —' James breathed a laugh and shook his head. 'She brought back this deal that wasn't, uh, very _popular_. Needless to say, it failed to pass Parliament, I called a vote of no confidence and, well…. That obviously,' he gestured down at himself, 'didn't work out so well for her.'

Lily grinned. 'Clearly.'

'When no one managed to get a government together after May lost confidence, we started pushing _hard _for a second referendum and that led to our victory earlier this year. People were shocked that we won — even I was a little surprised — but people were really, _really _pissed off about this whole thing. They felt like they'd been lied to, like leaving was a disaster, all that sort of thing.

'Of course,' James smirked at her, 'we still have a fair few bloody racists banging on about how we have to leave, but, overwhelmingly, we felt validated in calling for a second referendum when our government took over.'

Lily's brow furrowed. 'And people are upset about that? Having another chance to vote?'

James sighed. 'Not all of them. Most people are pretty happy for the second vote, actually, especially because the previous government had pretty well bungled the whole thing. And I shouldn't be bothered by it because, really, the people that are pissed off are the people I expected to be upset. You know, bloody Boris and all that fucking lot.'

Lily raised her eyebrows and James swore. 'Sorry. Former Foreign Secretary, huge arsehole.'

She laughed and brought her mug to her lips again. 'Succinct summary.'

James grinned at her. 'That's all you really need to know about him, really. Besides maybe the fact that he spent months lying to the voters with a fucking bus and banging on about bananas.'

'Bananas?'

James nodded and took a long sip of tea. 'Let's not get into it.'

She chuckled. 'Alright. Carry on, then.'

'So,' James reached up and pushed his glasses back up his nose, 'anyway, today we had PMQs — where the members of Parliament ask me questions — and I was just getting fucking _dragged _on the floor. We'd fast-tracked the bill for the second referendum through both houses of Parliament and we'd just had the final debate on the amendments the day before and — well, anyway, I'd let myself get derailed and then I was fumbling answers to things I knew perfectly well and _then _I had a massive row with my Foreign Secretary and just —' He sighed. 'I fucked up today. A lot. So I was in a right foul mood before you showed up this evening.'

Lily smiled softly at him. 'Well, like I said, I never would have known it from the look on your face when I arrived.'

'I'm very good at pretending.'

She breathed a laugh. 'Somehow I doubt that completely.'

He nudged her gently with his knee. 'I take offence to that.'

She looked up at him, her eyes shining with amusement despite the otherwise even expression on her face. 'Do you now?'

He nodded. 'I do.'

'Well, unfortunately there's very little I can do about the truth, Prime Minister.'

He bumped his knee against hers again and her face cracked into a smile.

She held his gaze for a long moment, and her smile — her bright, brilliant smile that settled solidly on his chest and made him feel like he couldn't quite breathe… her smile was knocking him sideways.

She brought her cup to her lips and took another sip. When she lowered it, her expression was softer, but James was no less overwhelmed.

'I'm sorry you had a difficult day.'

James shook his head. 'No matter. I didn't take this job because I expected it to be easy.'

'Still. I know what it's like when you feel like you're cocking everything up. I'm sorry you felt like that today.'

James sighed and smiled at her. 'Well, thanks.' He tipped his head towards her mug. 'Can I get you another?'

Lily's eyes flickered to her mug before she looked back up at him and, after a moment's consideration, shook her head. 'I should probably head back.'

He expected her to get up immediately, to stand and smooth her trousers and head out like she had done the last time she'd been in his office, but she stayed seated one, two, three beats longer than, maybe, she meant to. She just sat there, her eyes on his, and James didn't think he was entirely off base when he thought he noticed something there.

She sucked in a sharp breath and, with it, whatever it was in her expression cleared.

'Good night, Prime Minister.'

'James.' He stepped forward and took her hand, but he didn't shake right away. He just held her hand for a moment, felt its weight in his, and just when he was about to clear his throat, shake her hand, and drop it, he felt Lily brush her thumb against his.

His eyes flicked immediately down to their hands — because he couldn't quite let himself believe it had happened — and when he looked up, that look was back in her eyes again.

She dropped her hand and he thought, maybe, that she might clear her throat, straighten her shoulders, do _something _to otherwise correct herself, but she just held his gaze for a long moment before she stepped back, her expression earnest.

'Good night, James.'

* * *

**Find me on tumblr - same username! x**


	3. Chapter 3

**last chapter for the weekend - see you next week xx**

* * *

When Lily finally stepped back through the grate in her office back at the Ministry that night, it was half two.

Half. fucking. two.

She siphoned the ash off her clothes before she unfastened her cloak and let it fall down off her shoulders. She hung it haphazardly on the stand beside the grate and, because, honestly, it was half fucking two, kicked off her heels.

She might have to sit at her desk and get more work done, but she certainly didn't have to wear shoes to do it.

She grabbed the kettle off the mantle and waved her wand to fill it before she set it in the fire to start it boiling. No matter how late it was, no matter how tired she was, she had a stack of things she needed to get through before she could go to bed.

She had to prepare for that meeting with Crouch tomorrow.

Or, well. Today.

She tossed her wand onto her window sill and grabbed a mug from the corner, dropped in a tea bag from the tin beside before she leant up against the window. She crossed her arms and let her eyes fall closed for a moment as she listened to the kettle growing steadily louder from the fire across the room.

She hadn't expected to spend as much time as she had in James' office tonight — had thought that she'd just pop in, explain that she was concerned about a few things, and then pop right back out like last time — but she hadn't been able to resist talking with him. Hadn't been able to walk out of the room when he'd told her that he, too, had had an absolutely shit day.

It probably wasn't smart to be staying there until all hours just yammering away with him about things, but she'd said that she was going to push to have a better relationship with the Muggle government in her campaign hadn't she? And isn't that what she was doing by going and building a mutual relationship with the Prime Minister?

Nevermind some of the other things that she sometimes thought about him when she let herself.

Nevermind the handshake at the end there.

Their relationship was, and would remain, strictly professional.

And she was going to forget, entirely, about that little handshake.

And about the feeling in her chest as she looked at him and —

The kettle began screeching and Lily unfolded her arms, grabbed her wand from the sill, and gave it a wave without bothering to open her eyes. The kettle gradually fell silent as it floated out of the fire and onto the wooden mantlepiece, and, after tossing her wand onto her desk, Lily picked up her mug from the window sill, crossed the room, and poured in a healthy measure of water.

She crossed the office carefully to avoid spilling boiling water on her feet — something that happened with alarming frequency — and carefully set her mug down in the corner before dropping heavily into her chair.

She'd at least made it easy on herself before she'd left the office a few hours earlier — the stack of files she'd been reading was set neatly on her desk in order of urgency, her reading glasses resting neatly on top, and her pen (because she refused to use quills, had since her school days) pointing at the sentence she'd left off on before she'd gone to Number 10.

_The following sections will outline the various stages of the investigation by the Auror Office, including…._

She'd made it easy to pick right back up when she'd left off.

Trouble was, she hadn't anticipated picking back up at damn near three in the morning.

Still, determined to get through her "incredibly urgent" pile before morning, she grabbed her mug, took a quick, bracing sip of her still far too-hot and too-weak tea, and slid on her readers.

* * *

'Sleeping in your office again?'

Lily nearly jumped clean out of her chair. As it was, her head shot up off her hand, knocking her reading glasses clean off in the process, and she glared at the man standing opposite her desk.

'Fuck off, Remus.'

Remus' lips twitched with a just-contained smile. 'Now, is that any way for the Minister for Magic to speak?'

Lily held her fingers up at him and this time Remus' smile cracked through. It was only visible for a moment before he sobered. 'Long night at the Prime Minister's, I'm assuming?'

Lily sighed and reached back to rub the spot behind her ear where the arm of her glasses had been pressing into her skull all night.

'Yeah,' she said. 'He had quite a lot of questions.'

'Did he now?' Remus shifted the stack of papers he was holding and pulled his wand out of his back pocket. He waved his wand and sent the kettle zooming back into the fire before he dropped smoothly into the chair in front of Lily's desk and set his papers in the corner. 'Well, that's certainly a change of pace from the last one.'

Lily snorted. 'Yeah, well. May was so _Petunia_ about the whole thing. I'm not surprised she didn't have much to say.'

She grabbed her wand off her desk and summoned her shoes from where she'd dropped them the night before and slid them onto her feet. She had a spare outfit in her desk — at least, she thought she did, unless she'd forgotten to replace it after the last time she'd ended up falling asleep at her desk — but she couldn't be bothered to get changed at the moment.

Remus chuckled. 'So this, uh —' He frowned. 'What's his name?'

'Potter.' The kettle started steaming and Lily waved her wand to send it back to the mantle.

Remus nodded as he pushed himself back to his feet and, ignoring Lily's, 'Remus, I can make us tea, god damn it,' set about preparing their mugs.

'Potter,' Remus continued. 'What did he seem to think about the whole thing? What you talked about?'

Lily sighed. 'Well, he wants to _help _if you can believe it.'

Remus' eyebrows shot up. 'What?'

'I know.' She shook her head and sighed. 'I told him that there was no way in hell I was letting him get involved.'

Remus quirked an eyebrow at her, the slightest smirk tugging at his lips. 'Did you?'

'Well, not in so many words.'

'Mhmm.'

Remus carried their mugs back over to her desk and Lily turned and grabbed the sugar bowl from the window sill for Remus. He smiled gratefully at her and they both sat quietly for a moment preparing their tea, the soft tinkling of their spoons against the inside of the mugs and the crackling of the fire the only sound between them.

After a moment, Remus set down his spoon and lifted his mug. 'So he wants to help. I'm assuming you explained what's been going on? Is he just… mad?'

He took a sip of his tea and Lily laughed. 'Quite possibly. Though I don't know that I properly explained. I think I described our current predicament as a "sharp uptick in anti-Muggle activity", so I'm sure it didn't carry the weight it should've done.'

Remus raised an eyebrow at her. 'I doubt you left it at that.'

Lily breathed a laugh before she took a sip of her own tea. 'I did explain a bit about the history. Went into a little more detail than I did during our first meeting.'

'So he understands how these sorts of things can go, then?'

She half shrugged. 'I suppose. Though I still told him, in no uncertain terms, that he was not _helping._ I don't know what he'd expect to be able to do anyway. It's highly unlikely that his police force or intelligence services would have any information on any of these people. Letting him help would — I mean, I'd literally be sending a lamb to slaughter.'

Remus nodded slowly and they were both quiet for a moment, their gazes trained on an old ink spot in the centre of Lily's desk. After a minute, Remus cleared his throat and Lily looked up.

'Anything else to report from that meeting?'

She shook her head. 'No. We just talked about my election, otherwise. And the happenings in his government. Nothing too exciting.'

Remus furrowed his brow. 'Why did you talk about your election?'

Lily shrugged one shoulder. 'He was curious for a bit of background.'

Remus nodded, his expression carefully blank. Lily had half a mind to press the issue, but she was too tired to get into whatever this was with Remus this morning.

She needed all her mental energy for her meeting with Crouch that afternoon.

She cleared her throat and sat up a bit straighter in her chair. 'Alright, so, bit of business if you don't mind.'

Remus mimicked her posture and took a sip of his tea. 'Of course, Minister.'

Lily snorted. 'Oh, piss off.'

Remus flashed her a grin before he grabbed his stack of papers off Lily's desk. He handed her the sheet on top and Lily ran her eyes over it as Remus began talking.

'Arthur was in touch this morning to ask if we could reschedule his meeting to this afternoon. His wife is ill and he doesn't think he'll be able to be able to get in until later today.'

Lily shook her head. 'Tell him not to worry about it. We can meet next week. And pass along my well wishes to Molly, please.'

Remus nodded and flipped up the stack of paper on his lap to jot a note on the last page.

'Next,' he used his thumb to mark his place before he handed Lily a sizeable stack of paper off the top. 'Games and Sports has sent in their revised budget for the upcoming fiscal year. On a cursory glance, it looks like they've corrected the errors that we spotted in their last draft, but they're still allocating too much of their budget to the "bring the World Cup back" fund.'

Lily shook her head with a sigh. 'Might be worth a meeting with MacFarlan, then. I know he's angling to get the World Cup back, but the Norwegian Minister — she told me in no uncertain terms that _they _were getting the Cup on the next go round or they'd die trying.'

Remus laughed. 'She sounds like McGonagall.'

'She glares like McGonagall, too, so I'm not bothering with it. MacFarlan can reallocate that money or he can lose it.'

Remus nodded and made another note. 'I'll get a meeting on the books for this week. Early next week at the latest. Next,' he handed Lily another stack of papers, this one slimmer than the last but only just. 'Dolores has proposed her bill in the Wizengamot again —'

'Oh for _fuck's _sake.'

'You really missed out at the reading yesterday,' he said. 'She said that her proposals were more important now than ever because of the "questionable figures in the Minister's office".'

Lily's frown deepened and Remus gave her a small, sardonic smile. 'Apparently I'm a threat to all of wizard kind. I didn't even realise — I should put it on my CV.'

'She's _such _a —' Lily exhaled hard and brushed her hair back out of her eyes. 'You're sure we can't expel her?'

Remus sighed and shook his head. 'No. Not easily, anyway, and it's — honestly, it's not worth the damage you'd suffer.'

She sighed angrily and set the stack he'd handed her down onto the corner of her desk where it wouldn't get lost in the shuffle.

'I'll draft a statement after our meeting. If you could —'

'Copy and distribute. Got it.'

She nodded. 'Thank you, Remus.'

Remus shook his head. It was a slight, barely detectable movement, but Lily felt the weight behind it. 'Thank _you_, Lil.'

He held her gaze for a moment before he cleared his throat. 'And, lastly for the morning,' Remus handed her the last stack of paper on his lap, the biggest stack yet. 'Your meeting with Crouch is still on for this afternoon. I spoke with Rachel this morning to confirm and she finally sent up the documents you requested.'

Lily flicked through the paperwork Remus had just handed her and skimmed the headings. 'These are all the monthly reports from the last eighteen months?'

Remus nodded. 'And I've appended Crouch's reports to our office to each corresponding monthly report with a few notes.' Lily looked up at him eyebrows raised, but Remus' expression was even.

'For reference,' he said.

She hummed and dropped the stack of papers down onto her desk. 'Alright. And what time is that meeting? Three?'

Remus nodded. 'Yes.'

'Great. So I'll be spending the morning reading these, then. Unless there's something else I'm completely forgetting?'

Remus shook his head. 'There are a few first readings in the Wizengamot today, but I'll bring back a report as usual, uh, and I'll get Mary to add your statement to the top of the schedule, so I'll read that out today as well. Mysteries is scheduled to send us their monthly report by this afternoon. And I've just got a memo on my desk from Zoei's office requesting a meeting, but I'm not going to put that onto the calendar until later this week.'

Lily nodded. 'What does she want to chat about?'

'Some people in her department have been having issues with the rulings coming down out of the International Confederation of Wizards. Apparently, they don't think that Britain needs to be subjected to international law in any substantive way.'

Lily immediately thought of James and the people spewing that kind of nonsense in his own government.

She had enough to be getting on with at the moment without all that working itself up, too.

She frowned. 'Is there any room on the schedule for tomorrow?'

'Should be. You're meeting with Charles tomorrow morning to talk about how Transport is going to implement the new broomstick standards cross-market and I'm going to get that information packet to you this afternoon. And I'm still waiting on a bit of revised text from Bevins' office from the Creatures regulations inventory, but I was in touch with them this morning to let them know that I needed it by noon today. But otherwise, the schedule for tomorrow seems fairly flexible.'

Lily nodded. 'Great. See if we can't get Zoei on the calendar for tomorrow. I'd like to head this off if we can.'

'Understood.'

Remus picked his notes up off his lap and drained the last bit of tea out of his mug before he stood. He pulled his wand back out of his pocket, cleaned the mug, and sent it gently back across the room to the window sill.

'Anything else you need before I leave you to your reports?'

Lily nodded and tried her best to keep her expression even. She never was as good at it as Remus was, something that she found deeply troubling given that about ninety percent of her job involved keeping a straight face.

'How was your date last night?'

Remus immediately flushed — it was just a tinge of pink high on his cheeks, but it was enough that Lily noticed it. She grinned, her eyes going wide.

'That good? You looked very cute when you left the office last night, so I was hoping.'

Remus sighed, but there was a smile on his face now and he wasn't even bothering to hide it.

'He was nice,' Remus said in a slightly dignified tone.

Lily snorted. 'Mhmm.'

'He was.'

Lily hummed again, her smile widening. 'When are you seeing him again?'

'Friday. We're going out to dinner.'

'Good. Be sure to tell him that you're best friends with the Minister for Magic and that I won't hesitate to have him killed if he hurts you.'

Remus laughed and rolled his eyes at her. 'You're absurd.'

She smiled at him, but this one was a little softer, a little more genuine. 'I just love ya.'

Remus smirked. 'Lord, you sounded so Northern just then.'

Lily snorted. 'Oh, piss off, you bastard. Let me work.'

Remus grinned at her and inclined his head before he started towards the door.

'I'll have the statement to the Wizengamot to you in thirty minutes,' she said. Remus turned at the door, caught her eye, and nodded.

'Perfect.'

True to her word, she had the memo on Remus' desk thirty minutes after their meeting — _It is the opinion, therefore, of the Minister that the aforementioned legislation represents a level of gross indecency that should, without reservation, be rejected by the magical community….. _

Remus thought it was a little strong ('Lil — "any suggestion to the contrary is ethically criminal"?') but Lily was unwilling to budge. Dolores had proposed this same legislation in every session of the Wizengamot since Lily had become Minister, and she was tired of making mild-mannered statements about it.

Though Remus said that her statements were never what he would call mild-mannered.

Still, he accepted the statement in the end — 'I can't wait to see how they react when I read it out,' he'd said, barely concealing his amusement — and, after she changed into the spare outfit that, thankfully, she _did _have in her desk and charming her hair so it looked a little less horrific, Lily spent the rest of the morning preparing for her meeting with Crouch.

It was just before two when Lily heard the door into the main office open and followed by Sophie's bright, 'Good afternoon, Mr. Crouch.'

Lily swore under her breath and began gathering up the papers she had, over the course of the last few hours, somehow scattered all over her desk. She'd just about tidied everything when Sophie knocked on Lily's door and poked her head in.

'Mr Crouch has arrived.'

Lily nodded and looked up at Sophie as she tapped the paper in her hands into a straight pile. 'Thanks. Can you send him in in a minute?'

Sophie nodded once, said, 'Of course,' and shut the door again.

Lily grabbed a bulldog clip from the top drawer of her desk — this one was bright red and had soft golden circles on — and fastened the papers together before she dropped the stack, face down, onto her desk. She'd just sat up straighter in her chair and finished rolling out her shoulders when there was another knock on her door and Sophie pushed the door open again.

'Mr Crouch for you, Minister.'

Lily smiled warmly as she stood. 'Thank you, Sophie.'

Sophie shut the door behind her, and Crouch and Lily stared at one another for a moment before Crouch cleared his throat.

'Good afternoon, Minister.'

Lily tipped her head in acknowledgement as she resumed her seat. 'Afternoon, Crouch. Care for a cuppa?'

Crouch shook his head as he settled into the chair opposite Lily's desk. 'No, no. That's alright.'

'You sure?' She picked up her wand and sent the kettle into the fire again. 'I'm having one, so it's no trouble.'

'Well,' Crouch watched as she waved her wand at the mugs in the corner and prepared one for herself. Lily turned and looked at him expectantly.

Crouch cleared his throat. 'Well, alright then. Thank you.'

Lily nodded once and prepared another cup before she dropped her wand and leant forward, resting her forearms on the desk.

'So,' she sounded a bit shorter than she intended to this early on, but she couldn't be bothered to adjust her tone. 'I'm sure you have some idea of why you're here this afternoon.'

Crouch pressed his lips together in an attempt to suppress what Lily assumed was a look a profound annoyance.

He nodded. 'I've some idea, yes.'

She knew he was livid, knew that the fact that she'd asked him here today had probably been grating on his nerves since Rachel had set the meeting, but she admired the lengths he was going to to hide his irritation.

Though she was sure it was out of respect for her office more than it was respect for her on a personal level.

The kettle began softly whistling and Lily, keen to avoid the thing screeching at full volume, waved her wand to pull it from the fire. She filled their mugs before she brought them, carefully, across the room towards her desk, followed by the small pitcher of milk and, after confirming that he would, indeed, like sugar, the sugar bowl.

They were quiet for a moment as they prepared their tea, and Lily could feel Crouch's irritation increasing the longer they sat there in silence. She knew it was a delicate balance — she didn't know Crouch well enough to know where his limit was and she was, if she was honest, fighting with her desire to at least make him a little irritated in return for the sheer rage she'd been dealing with for the last few months — but she also knew that Crouch was, usually, decorous to a fault.

He would grin his teeth and bear it a lot longer than most people for the sake of maintaining a sense of propriety.

Lily tapped her spoon neatly on the side of her cup and Crouch looked up at her as she took a sip of her tea.

'So,' she leant back in her chair, bringing her mug to rest on the arm. 'You said you've got an idea — why do you think I've asked you here this afternoon?'

Crouch's face remained, nearly, perfectly impassive — his only tell was the way his left eye narrowed _just _slightly as he considered her. She wished that he was a bit easier to read because the sickly curious side of her was _dying _to know just what was going on in his head just then.

Crouch set his mug down on the table without taking a sip, straightened up in his chair, and set his shoulders.

'Well, I have to assume that it's related to our… well-established disagreement on my department's handling of certain minor offences.'

She felt her involuntary response rising to the surface — a deep scowl, probably a scoff, and possibly a swearing fit if she somehow opened her mouth, but she caught it, thankfully, before anything showed on her face.

She consciously relaxed the muscles in her face. Relaxed her jaw. She drew in a slow, quiet breath through her nose and relaxed the hand clutching her mug.

'That's certainly one way of putting it, isn't it?' She eyed Crouch over her mug as she took another sip, but he remained stiff in his chair.

She set her mug back down on the arm.

'As you should be aware,' she said, her voice harder, 'I've had a report from Arthur Weasley yesterday that notes a sharp increase in the number of Muggle-baiting crimes over the last quarter. None of these crimes were included in your reports to our office over that period despite the fact that the Auror Office included discussions of them in each of their monthly reports to you. Was there a reason for that omission?'

Crouch studied her for a moment, his expression stony, before he cleared his throat. 'At the risk of sounding disrespectful, Minister, it sounds as though you've already assumed that omission was intentional.'

'My time in the Auror office taught me that it's probably safe to make assumptions when you've got a substantial body of evidence to support your conclusion.'

Lily could hear Crouch's slow, measured inhale from across her desk and she tried not to let her joy at obviously frustrating him show on her face.

'My decisions about what to include when I'm writing our Department's reports to your office always centre around the information that I believe to be most relevant. Those things that attracted the most attention during the month will, therefore, command most of the text of the report. If something was reported up to my office but seemed insignificant in its scope — well, I didn't see any reason to include that.'

'Information about an ongoing investigation in the Auror Office could never be insignificant.'

'The events themselves —'

'I don't give a damn how small the incidents are.' Her voice was cold steel and Crouch visibly stiffened. 'They are _always _significant. To ignore the near-constant events being picked up by the Muggle Liaison office, to pretend that those crimes, small as they are, aren't relevant to the larger standing anti-Muggle investigation in the Auror Office — it's careless and, frankly, Crouch, it's ignorant.'

She paused and took a slow, quiet breath in through her nose. She'd let the valve open, just a bit, but that was no reason to start exploding all at once.

She needed to keep a handle on herself.

'I asked your office back in June to take these crimes more seriously. The Auror Office's investigation has, according to their reports on the matter, turned up dozens of promising leads and given us a number of persons of interest. This is not something that we can ignore — not unless you're willing to go back to the situation we had in the nineties.'

Crouch looked like he wanted to roll his eyes but he just caught himself. 'The nineties were a completely different scenario —'

'For _you_. Some of us remember those years a little differently.'

Crouch held her gaze for a moment before he faltered and looked back down at his mug on her desk.

'So what would you like me to do?' he asked, looking back up at her again. 'Order the Auror Office to stop the very real investigations they're getting on with? Ask them to focus exclusively on cases of old Muggle women getting their noses nipped at by tea cups?'

The bait was clear in his forumluation, but she was refusing to let herself rise to it. She took a small sip of her tea — the warmth, as always, steadying her — before she set her mug on the desk and crossed her hands neatly on top of the wood.

'The Auror Office doesn't seem to have any problem balancing the workload — from my reading of their reports and my conversations with Moody,' Crouch looked livid, then, that she'd gone around him and been talking to Moody behind his back, and she suppressed a satisfied smile, 'the Aurors have dedicated a small team of people to this particular set of investigations. Moody is ready and willing to reallocate resources as necessary. What I'd _like, _however, is for the Auror Office to have more support from their Department Head.'

'I support the Aurors —'

'Not in this, you don't. And it's abundantly clear in the way that your budgets are structured, in the kinds of expenditures that are approved, the way the lines are established, that this isn't a priority from your end. And, when the Auror Office brings in people for questioning, people that they'd like to put forward to the Wizengamot, your office has taken great pains to ensure that those cases don't come forward.'

She seemed to have touched a nerve because Crouch tilted his head at her. 'Are you insinuating that I'm allowing people to walk free?'

'Yes.'

He, clearly, must have been expecting her to deny it, because his eyebrows shot up in surprise.

'It is abundantly clear to me,' she said, 'from those cases brought forward and the seriousness with which those cases are treated, that this is an incredibly low priority for your office. And not only does it undermine the work that your Aurors are putting into these investigations — the research, the interviews, the undercover work — but you are allowing people to walk out of the Ministry that could be very, _very _valuable to us. Because whether you like it or not, there _has _been an uptick in these sorts of crimes and that uptick _has _been significant.

'And I thought I made myself quite plain when we spoke about this in the summer, but apparently it bears repeating. I will not stand for this assertion that these crimes are not worth the Aurors' time, as was argued, and I will not stand for the dismissal of these cases by the Department. I expect that these cases are taken seriously, especially because, as my conversations with Moody have quite clearly demonstrated, their investigation has been critical to our overall understanding of these incidents since they began in 2015. I know, from my time in your position, that these crimes are almost always committed by repeat offenders and that they are not nearly as innocuous as they seem. They aren't "lads having a laugh" — these are serious crimes and I expect them to be adjudicated as such.'

Crouch was glaring at her. 'Anything else, Minister?'

She nodded. 'If we continue having issues on this matter, I'll be asking for your letter of resignation.'

* * *

**Come say hi on tumblr! Same username :) x**


	4. Chapter 4

**Moving forward, I'm going to post one chapter on Saturday morning and one chapter on Sunday morning. It'll help space it out a bit and I think that'll be nice (though I'm sure you disagree with me on that score eek)**

**SO ANYWAY I'll see you lot tomorrow! I already can't wait xx**

* * *

It took Lily an hour to fully recover from her meeting with Crouch.

She'd settled in with the last few reports from the International Confederation of Wizards — their full-body declarations, their recent proposals, and the legislation from the last year or so — and she'd had Sophie write to Zoei's office to request any internal documentation concerning anything she might not be able to glean from the Department reports. She wanted to throw herself immediately into this other project, this other potential catastrophe staring her down, but she just couldn't get the look of Crouch's face out of her mind as he'd left her office that afternoon.

She didn't mind that he was angry with her — she wouldn't have gotten where she had if she minded when people were upset with her — but it was just….

It was the absolute lack of concern with which he'd been treating these crimes.

It had been this way for months.

And she shouldn't be surprised, not after he'd looked her across the table at the All Department meeting back in July and said that it wasn't worth the Auror Office's time or attention, and she wasn't surprised. Not really.

But still.

It was nearly five when Lily set the stack of paperwork she'd been reading back down on her desk — the ins and outs of cauldron thickness standardisation was _as _boring as she'd expected it would be when she'd picked up that particular bit of legislation — and sighed. She wasn't really reading anyway — she'd have to re-read all her highlights tomorrow because she hadn't absorbed a damn thing — and she deserved a night at home.

A proper night at home. A night where she didn't bring home a single piece of paperwork. A night where she went home, got a nice long shower, shut all her windows so no bloody owls could get inside, and went to bed early.

She hadn't had a night like that in ages.

The last night she could remember was the night a few months ago when Marlene and Mary had come over and they'd sat on the sofa, passed a bottle of wine between them, and listened to the wireless and laughed about the most absurd things they could come up with.

Though that particular night had ended with Marlene getting called into St Mungo's on emergency and then Lily'd gotten an owl an hour later about something she couldn't remember now and so maybe that night didn't count after all.

She took a minute to reorganise the stacks of paper on her desk before she pushed herself to her feet. She rolled out her neck and sighed heavily before she crossed the office and opened the door. Sophie looked up from her desk and smiled.

'Can I help you, Minister?'

Lily smiled at her and shook her head. 'No, thank you, Sophie. I just wanted to let you know that I'm headed out. You should head out, too. There's nothing that can't wait until tomorrow.'

Sophie smiled. 'I'm just going to finish up this report. I'll leave it on your desk?'

Lily nodded. 'If you're sure. I honestly don't mind getting it a little later tomorrow. You do great work and I've got plenty of other things I could read.'

Sophie glowed at the compliment. 'I'm sure. I'll leave it there as soon as I'm finished and then close up the office.'

'Alright. And have you seen Remus around? I didn't see him after the Wizengamot this afternoon.'

She'd been worrying, in the back of her mind, all day about Remus reading that statement out, but she hadn't heard anything from anyone at the session today about how it had gone. She couldn't decide if that was a good thing or a terrible one.

Sophie nodded. 'He got back while you were meeting with Mr Crouch. I think he's in his office, but he said that he would just catch you up during the morning report tomorrow.'

Lily hummed. 'He's in his office now?'

'I believe so.'

Lily pulled her office door shut behind her and walked out of the reception area outside her office and into the corridor. Remus' office wasn't far — he was just a few doors down from her main office — so it was only a moment before she was outside his door.

Sure enough, his door was cracked and she could just hear the soft sound of the wireless streaming out of the office.

She knocked and Remus cleared his throat. 'Come in.'

She pushed open the door and leant against the frame. Remus looked up and grinned. 'Hey, Lil. Headed out?'

She nodded. 'I wanted to check in about the Wizengamot before I left, though. How'd it go?'

Remus sighed heavily and set his pen down before he leant back in his chair. 'You sure you really want to hear about it before you head home? You don't want _one _relaxing night where you don't have to worry about this?'

'I'm worrying about things anyway,' she said, waving her hand dismissively. 'What's one more thing on the list?'

Remus snorted. 'A Minister's work is never done, eh?'

She rolled her eyes and walked into his office, pushing the door shut behind her before settling into the chair across from Remus' desk.

'So,' she crossed her legs and folded her hands neatly in her lap, 'spill.'

He laughed. 'Honestly, it's not the big deal you're making it out to be. I'm sure you you could tell me _right now _how you think the whole thing went and you'd be absolutely right.'

'Alright.' Lily hummed. 'Dolores was irritated before you even stood up because she noticed your name on the schedule and was sure that some fuckery was about to go down.'

Remus snorted, but nodded. 'Go on.'

Lily grinned. 'She was full on scowling by the time you stood up and probably muttered something horrid under her breath as you began talking, but she still listened because, unfortunately, she's not stupid enough to make a proper scene and help us make the case for expelling her stupid arse.'

Remus' smile widened. 'Right again.'

'And then she spent the rest of the session glaring at you and — and I'm pretty sure she was on the schedule today about something, wasn't she?' Remus nodded and Lily hummed. 'Perfect. I'm sure she mentioned it in her little speech even though it was entirely irrelevant to whatever you all were talking about.'

Remus shook his head at her. 'You're unbelievable, you are.'

Lily grinned. 'Dolores is just a predictable ol' cow. But so what did she say when she stood up?'

'She was "appalled" at the fact that that sort of statement would come out of the Minister for Magic's office,' Remus said, raising an eyebrow at Lily. 'Apparently, you aren't supposed to use your office to achieve political ends — you're supposed to be "pursuing justice for the wider wizarding community" and you are "utterly failing those who put you in this position whenever you dare make statements of this ilk".'

'_Ilk_.'

'I know. I rolled my eyes _so hard_ I'm pretty sure they got stuck for a minute.'

Lily laughed. 'She —' She shook her head and breathed a hard sigh. 'Twat. Classic fucking twat.'

'Right? But don't go stressing yourself about it tonight. There's nothing we can do about her, anyway. The most important thing is that I'm pretty sure your statement had the desired effect on the less twatty people in the Wizengamot.'

'Oh?'

He nodded. 'You won't win everyone, of course, but I saw a lot of vigorous head nodding among the usual suspects, a vast majority who looked like they agreed, and then there were a number of people who looked sufficiently chastened. Won't fix everything, but —'

'I'll take it,' Lily said. She shifted in her seat and leaned back so that she could rest her head on the back of the chair.

Remus didn't say anything, just let her sit there quietly for a moment, and Lily was glad of the opportunity to close her eyes.

'Merlin,' she said, opening her eyes but not lifting her head up from the chair. 'I am so fucking exhausted.'

'All you do is work,' Remus said, 'so I can't say I'm surprised.'

She picked her head up just enough to shoot him a look. 'I do other things.'

'Like what?'

'Like… read.'

Remus cocked a knowing eyebrow at her. 'Reading reports at home on your sofa doesn't count.'

She sat up straighter in her chair. 'Look —'

Remus held up his hand. 'We can argue about this tomorrow. Go home.'

'But —'

He shook head head at her. 'Go home. I'll see you tomorrow.'

She knew Remus well enough to know not to argue with him when he struck that no nonsense tone.

Still, she couldn't resist the impulse entirely.

'You're no fun,' she muttered.

Remus snorted. 'I'm not here to be fun. I'm here to remind you that you can't work yourself into the ground, no matter how much you might want to.'

Lily narrowed her eyes at him but Remus ignored her. '_Go home._'

She sighed but she knew, really, that Remus was right anyway. She was exhausted and her back was killing her from sleeping at her desk for the third time in the last week and, honestly, she should probably go make sure that her place hadn't burnt to the ground in her absence.

'Alright,' she pushed herself to her feet. 'I'll see you tomorrow, then.'

Remus nodded. 'Bright and early, I'm sure.'

Lily flashed him a grin. 'Mind if I use your fire? I don't want to walk all the way back to mine.'

She thought that Remus might make fun of her for not wanting to walk two dozen or so metres back to her own office, but he shook his head and gestured towards the pot of Floo Powder on the mantelpiece.

'Go on.'

'Cheers.' Lily tipped her head in thanks before she stepped forward and grabbed a pinch of powder out of the pot and tossed it into the fire. The fire instantly blazed bright green and Lily cast a look over her shoulder — Remus waved his fingers at her before her looked back at the report he was reading — and then she stepped into the flames.

The rush of warm air blew her hair back from her face as she stepped through the grate and she sighed heavily and attempted to tuck it behind her ear. There was no reason for it, her hair was going to be all over the bloody place in a moment anyway, but still —

She tucked her arms neatly against her sides, looked down at her feet and said, 'Lily Evans' place.'

Remus didn't even look up as she spun out of sight.

* * *

She pulled her wand out of the interior pocket of her blazer as she stepped through her grate at home a moment later and siphoned the bits of ash off herself before she slid her cloak off and hung it on the coat rack beside the fire.

She let her eyes fall closed and rolled her head from side to side for a moment before she sighed and opened her eyes.

She had no idea what she was going to eat for dinner.

And her house was, honestly, a bit of a disaster.

The place was nice — usually. It was small, smaller than probably made sense, really, when you considered her position, but it was the first flat she'd bought when she was just starting to get traction at the Ministry and, aside from not wanting to bother selling, she found that she really liked this little place. It was comfortable and familiar — something she valued more and more these days — and had a lovely, lived-in charm about it. She had bookshelves lining the walls to the left of her fireplace and a wall of windows to the right that, during the day, meant the flat was flooded with light. Her kitchen — directly opposite the lounge — was a small, galley-style affair, but there were some decent sightlines and she liked the easy flow from lounge to dining area to kitchen. Her room and her office were set at the other end of the short corridor off the lounge, near the front door she almost never used. And, sure, she probably could've moved somewhere larger, grander, but this place…

She loved this place.

Trouble was, her flat mostly looked like it did at the moment.

The cushions on her sofa were all out of order, there were piles of papers across the sofa and the coffee table, and mugs were scattered everywhere. She had stacks of things on the bookshelves and she could see shoes — shoes she'd kicked off the last few times she'd been home — sprinkled all over the path she normally tread from the fireplace to the kitchen….

She needed to be better about leaving the place in a cleaner state, but she was always rushing out the door to something or another and then by the time she got home at night, she was properly exhausted and she just couldn't be bothered.

No one was ever over anyway, no one besides Remus or Mary or Marlene, and they already knew that she was a bit… unkempt, so what did it matter?

Still. She probably shouldn't be living like this.

She tucked her wand back into her blazer and, after kicking her shoes off underneath the coat rack, swept forward to gather up the mugs she'd left all over the coffee table. There were easily a half dozen — some lipstick marked, others stained from her having brewed cup after cup of tea in them and not having washed them out properly — and she tucked each one carefully into her arms before she walked off into the kitchen, kicking shoes she'd left dotted around the room towards the hall where, hopefully, she'd grab them later that night when she went to bed.

The bookshelves… she cast a look at them as she walked past. She still had some of her old school books on there — _Standard Book of Spells Grade One_, in particular, caught her eye — and there were little bags of potion ingredients she'd bought and then dropped there as she'd walked through the door, there were books stuffed hastily in any old place….

The bookshelves were going to take a little more time to sort out.

And, as her now rumbling stomach so helpfully reminded her, she didn't have that time at the moment.

She rounded the corner into her kitchen and set each mug carefully into the sink that was — incredibly — only slightly full instead of overflowing with dishes like she'd expected, before she turned and opened the refrigerator opposite.

It was a sad state of affairs, that refrigerator.

She had an aspirationally-purchased box of spinach that had, naturally, gone all brown inside it's container (she felt slightly vindicated by the fact that she'd at least eaten half the spinach before it had gone bad this time), a nearly empty litre of milk, a single container of yoghurt, and a quarter-full jar of olives.

And as tempted as she was to just say fuck it and eat the rest of those olives with a fork and call it a night, she knew that she probably needed to rustle up something legitimate.

Luckily she had a bit of pasta in the cupboard and… _yes_, an old tin of tomato sauce, and she wasn't so completely hopeless that she couldn't boil water.

It was honestly a miracle that she'd managed to keep herself alive this long. She set a pot of water on the hob before she stepped back over to the sink, grabbed her sponge off the holder, and began soaping up her dishes. She'd managed to move into the highest level of government, was responsible for keeping the entire wizarding community happy and healthy and under control, but, in all her years living alone, she hadn't figured out how to make herself anything more complicated than your most basic pasta dishes.

And it wasn't for lack of trying — she had a fair few cookbooks that she'd picked up from Flourish and Blotts over the years and her mum, when she'd been alive, had tried her best to persuade Lily to cook dinner with her once a week in hopes that she'd learn a few things. But she'd spent so much of her twenties — so much of her entire adult life, if she was being really honest — just… at work. She hadn't wanted, when she got home exhausted, to worry about putting together something nice for herself. It had been easier to get a bowl of cereal or eat half a log of goat cheese with a bit of bread before she collapsed into bed.

She'd tried to cook a little more once she found herself in largely office roles that had her home at a more reasonable time, but then her utter lack of skill revealed itself and well.

She absolutely hated being rubbish at things.

She could hear the water boiling behind her as she finished washing the last mug — the bit of lipstick on this one had been almost impossible to move — and she set it on the draining board beside her other clean dishes before she dried her hands on the tea towel hanging from the cabinet and turned back to the cooker. She grabbed a reasonably-sized handful of pasta from the box she'd left beside and adjusted the spaghetti noodles in her hand so that she could crack them in half evenly before she dropped them into the pot. She took a wooden spoon from the utensil holder nearby and gave everything a quick stir before she set it down on the countertop.

She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers firmly into her temples, moving them in deep, slow circles.

She was so fucking tired.

And, she rolled out her shoulders, she really, _really _needed to stop falling asleep at work.

She should have gone home last night honestly, should have just stepped right back into the fire the moment she got back to her office and come home. She hadn't read for _that _long before she'd fallen asleep anyway because she'd been at James' — the Prime Minister's — so late and she was properly worn out by the time she was sitting at her desk again.

But, no, in classically Lily fashion, she'd insisted on sitting up at her desk and reading herself to sleep and probably permanently denting the side of her skull from pressing the arm of her glasses into it all night.

Though the issue wasn't that she'd stayed late at work again. The issue was, honestly, the fact that she'd let herself get caught talking to the Prime Minister for as long as she had.

Because it wasn't like they'd had a completely professional conversation, no matter how much she might have wanted to pretend it to herself, though even that impulse — to pretend, to sketch the narrative in her memory so that it read more… innocently — was confusing to her. They'd talked about the things that she'd needed him to know, but the conversation, that part of it, had been done in fifteen minutes. _Maybe _half an hour.

How she'd ended up there for two hours after that was something that, in retrospect, completely escaped her.

She glanced up at the clock over the sink and swore under her breath. She grabbed the strainer from the cupboard beside the cooker and lifted the pasta off the hob. The steam felt nice, warm, on her face as she drained the slightly overcooked pasta, and she gave the collander a shake before she grabbed one of the bowls she'd just cleaned from the draining board and tipped a heaping serving of pasta inside. She had to rummage around in her cutlery drawer for a moment, but she eventually found her tin opener and opened the sauce — she poured a bit over the pasta in her bowl, the rest over the remaining pasta in the saucepan. She grabbed a fork and nudged the cutlery drawer shut with her hip and walked across the kitchen towards her dining table, flipping on the wireless on the countertop on her way.

'That,' the presenter was saying as Lily settled into her chair, 'was a new rocker off the Weird Sisters' fifth album — I hope you enjoyed that as much as we did because Orsino Thruston will be here tomorrow morning to chat with us a bit more about what we can expect off the next album. Now, though, we've got a few adverts — stick with us, though, because we'll be back in three with the latest hit from Spellbound. '

Lily scooped a massive bite of pasta into her mouth as a tinkling little jingle flooded over the wireless.

She really should have brought something home to work on.

And she knew that she should just take the time to herself — that she should learn to be alright with sitting at the table and not forcing herself to work, that Remus was probably right every time that he told her she was working herself into an early grave — but honestly. It was just impossible to sit there and do absolutely nothing.

She felt like she was squandering this time. And she had so little time as it was that it felt incredibly irresponsible to be doing anything with it other than working.

She dropped her fork back into her bowl, walked over to one of her bookshelves, and grabbed herself something to read. It wasn't work, _A Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry, as it Relates to Muggle Technology, _but it was better than sitting there doing nothing and just letting her mind wander.

She had no idea where her mind was going to end up if she just let it wander about freely and it seemed best to avoid finding that out at all costs.

By the time she finished her pasta half an hour later, she'd gotten through the first few chapters of her book. It wasn't wholly fascinating — she found herself mostly flipping through the pages more than actually reading them — but she grabbed a bit of paper from the cluster of mess in the basket on the table that she pretended was a centrepiece and marked her page anyway.

There was a promising set of chapters about how singularly magical spaces had been adapted since the advent of the internet and, honestly, she was quite keen to read that. It hadn't happened at the Ministry, obviously, but maybe it would give her some ideas.

Plus, Dolores and all those old hats would hate it. And that was reason enough because, honestly, wouldn't it just be splendid, listening to them rail against the internet, something she knew they didn't know a damn thing about?

She dropped her bowl into the sink and was halfway out of the kitchen before, yawning, she paused, turned back, and gave it a quick wash. She wasn't going to have time to wash it in the morning and who knew if she was going to come back tomorrow night and she really, _really _didn't want to end up with a situation like she'd had a few weeks ago where she'd come home and the entire house had smelt like mould because she'd left an old soup bowl in the sink for four days.

In her defence, it wasn't that she'd just left the bowl there out of laziness. She just hadn't been home.

Satisfied that the bowl was sufficiently clean, Lily set it on the draining board and flicked off her kitchen light. The whole space immediately went dark — she'd forgotten to flick on another light — and Lily swore she started across the lounge into the corridor.

And then she swore _again _— louder — because she almost immediately stumbled over one of the fucking shoes she'd left lying on the floor earlier that evening.

She groped along the wall and, after a few moments' failed searching, finally found the switch just inside the corridor. She spun around — after pausing for a moment to blink against the sharp, bright light — and knelt down to gather the shoes up into her arms. There were _four pairs _on the floor, not counting the pair she'd left over by the fireplace, and she was simultaneously surprised by her laziness and shocked that she'd only left four pairs of shoes on the floor for her to potentially trip and kill herself on.

She pressed her chin into the top-most shoe as she stood up and walked unsteadily towards her room at the end of the hall. Her door was, thankfully, open, and so, after nudging open her wardrobe with her elbow, she dumped her shoes unceremoniously into the bottom of the wardrobe and shut them inside.

She knew it was a mess in there and she knew that her life would probably be easier if it were tidier, but honestly. She had other things to be getting on with.

She pulled her wand out of her blazer and set it on her bedside table before she let the jacket slide off her shoulders and threw it towards the washing basket in the corner. The rest of her clothes followed suit (except for her bra — she just looped the strap over one of the knobs on her wardrobe) before she walked back out of her room, across the hall, and into the bathroom.

It was a bit of a disaster in here as well — she had extra linens stacked precariously on the shelves over the toilet, products cluttered along the back of the sink — but everything was just where she needed it to be. She stepped over to the shower and switched on the water before she grabbed a headband from one of the drawers in the vanity and slid it on to push her hair back off her face. She grabbed one of the bottles from behind the sink — this new magical makeup remover she'd bought a few weeks ago that, honestly, was the best thing she'd tried yet — tipped it onto a flannel she grabbed from the shelf, and immediately started rubbing her makeup off.

She always looked a little bit mad and raccoonish for a second — especially around the eyes — but it was amazing how well this stuff worked. She checked her face in the mirror, careful to make sure that she'd gotten off the last bit of her eyeliner, before she dropped the now horrifically stained flannel onto the countertop and grabbed herself a fresh one from the shelf.

She ran the tap — the water from the sink always seemed to heat up so much quicker than the water in the shower — and, after soaking her new flannel in water that was _nearly _too hot, she tipped her head back and rested it over her face.

This moment — this was easily one of her favourite bits of the day.

She tried to let her mind go completely blank as she steamed her skin, tried to use this as the one moment in her day where she was allowed, finally, not to think about anything. It was hard to get it all out of her head — Arthur's report and Crouch and the now impending crisis in Zoei's office — but she did her best.

She'd nearly done it, but then her mind, for some reason, started thinking about James.

The Prime Minister.

_The Prime Minister_.

Look, she knew he was attractive — she'd be an idiot not to notice. Between his broad shoulders and his bright hazel eyes and that jawline and his arse in those damn trousers….

She'd have been an idiot not to notice how nice he looked in those suits of his. Even when — maybe especially when — his tie was gone and he'd unfastened the top two buttons of his dress shirt and his hair was standing on end from having had his hands in it all day….

Yeah, she liked him quite a bit when he looked a little wrecked.

And she knew that she shouldn't be thinking about him like this — she'd been avoiding thinking about it because, really, she _shouldn't _— but he was just…. He was magnetic. He had an almost boyish charm to him and, normally, that wasn't something she found herself drawn to, but James' charm didn't read immature or childish. It was light, easy, fun, and she could tell, from the way that he sometimes smiled at her or the look she sometimes caught in his eye, that he probably liked a bit of mischief, but there was also a steadiness there. A stability.

There was a dedication to his work, too, and she found that almost unbearably sexy.

So she thought back to Remus' careful expression when she'd described their conversation that morning. She thought about the stacks of paper on her desk and the reports from Arthur that she hadn't fully described, and she thought about the complicated — to put it lightly — relationship between their worlds.

And then she thought about the tension in her gut when James looked at her, at the soft, steady warmth that flooded through her as he smiled and handed her a cup of tea and how the tea was just how she liked it. She thought about, for a brief, flickering moment, what it might be like to try and fit their worlds together.

She took a deep, humid breath and tipped her head up again, blinking against the bright lights as the flannel slipped away from her eyes. She tossed the flannel onto the counter and, after taking one more deep, steadying breath, she crossed the bathroom and stepped into the shower.

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**Come find me on tumblr! Same username :) x**


	5. Chapter 5

**I'll see you lot next Saturday with a new chapter. Have a lovely week, my friends! xx**

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The rest of September passed in a haze. London had one final heat snap before the weather cooled, the days grew shorter, and the rain started falling in earnest. The change didn't make much of a practical difference in Lily's life — the view out her window was subjected to the whim of Magical Maintenance and was more closely connected to whether or not Maintenance wanted a pay rise than it was to the actual weather outside — but, still, she welcomed the change in season.

It meant, if nothing else, the introduction of the autumn agenda, and Lily was always keen to capitalise on the energy immediately following its announcement.

And she'd had a fair few victories since the start of October — the chief warlock refused to let Dolores' bill see the floor because, "as the Minister so succinctly put it, this bill is the epitome of the kind of bigotry our community must name and eradicate", the rebellion in International Cooperation had, if only temporarily, been quelled, her autumn budget had been approved along with the _massive_ eight per cent annual increase in funding for St. Mungo's — but even with all that progress, there were still so many things that needed her endless time and energy.

Crouch was still only grudgingly putting his resources towards investigating and prosecuting Muggle-centred crimes, Arthur Weasley's reports were showing, with an increasingly alarming frequency, that the number of such crimes were growing (and the climate report Arthur's office generated at the beginning of the month had sent Lily into a nearly week-long panic) and Lily was still so busy that she was away from home for days at a time —

She tried to remember that she sometimes needed to close her eyes. That she needed to breathe. That she needed to sleep in her actual bed instead of passing out with her face pressed onto a stack of papers on her desk.

And then, on the 23rd of October, Arthur Weasley and Alastor Moody requested an urgent meeting.

'Sorry for the urgency, Minister,' Arthur said as he and Moody stepped into her office that afternoon.

Lily shook her head and gestured towards the chairs opposite her desk. 'Nevermind, Arthur. I'd rather you were here urgently than I'm hearing about things too late.'

Moody cleared his throat and gave her what she knew to be a smile, though it looked more like a grimace. 'Always were that way, weren't ya?'

Lily's face cracked into a smile. 'Old habits.'

'So,' she sat down and rested her hands neatly on the desk in front of her, 'what's been going on?'

'Last night,' Arthur said, 'Aurors were called to respond to an incident in Slough.'

Arthur grabbed two folders off the top of the pile on his lap. 'The top,' he nodded towards the folders in her hands, 'is my copy of the incident report the Auror Office generated. The bottom is the report from the Department Head's office.'

Lily raised an eyebrow at him as she flipped open the top folder. 'How did you get that?'

Arthur's expression remained perfectly even, though there was no mistaking the slight, almost mischievous glimmer in his eye. 'Can't recall.'

Lily hummed and nodded before she turned her gaze back to the folder in her hands and started scanning the page.

_Aurors Longbottom and Williamson arrived at 21 Thurston Road, Slough… 01:30… use of magic in an area not known to house any wizards…. John and Celia Ackerman and their two children (3 and 8)... a disturbance in their back garden…. Mr Ackerman was attacked while Mrs Ackerman and their children watched on… Stunning spell to the chest…. Aurors arrived before further damage….. arrested…._

Lily looked up, her jaw slack. 'They stunned him in front of his family.'

Arthur nodded solemnly. 'I don't think that was their original plan, but that's almost equally troubling. We aren't sure what more they were going to do.'

Lily looked back down at the report. The back garden was ransacked when Longbottom and Williamson arrived — the kids' toys were everywhere and the garden shed had been blasted apart — and Mrs Ackerman and the kids were standing in the kitchen absolutely hysterical as the intruders levitated their unconscious father and smacked his body, repeatedly, into the ground —

'What happened post?'

'Longbottom and Williamson arrested them. We were lucky they were still there. Underneath,' he pointed to the folder in her hands, 'is their arrest report.'

Lily flicked back the paper in her hands and ran her eyes over the arrest report.

_Age: 17, 18_

Fucking hell. They were barely adults.

She looked up at Arthur. 'What happened to them? The Ackermans?'

'They were Obliviated,' Arthur said, folding his hands in his lap, 'and —'

Lily's gaze snapped to Moody. 'On whose orders?'

Moody crossed his arms and leant back in his chair. 'You know that, don't ya?'

Lily swore under her breath. 'Were they at least taken to St Mungo's? Escorted home?'

Moody nodded his head slowly. 'One was taken to St Mungo's. The girl.'

Lily's brow furrowed and she looked back at the initial incident report. 'It didn't sound like she was injured? The father —'

'She was holding onto the memories a little more than they liked,' Moody said. 'They wiped her memory twice and she was still talking about the "red light" that knocked her father down. They were wary of doing it a third time in the field, so they took her to the healers to have them do it. The father's injuries, and I trust Longbottom and Williamson's judgment on this, could be treated at the local A&E. They escorted him there as bystanders and said they'd seen him beaten in the street. They'd grabbed his wallet from home so the hospital would know who to call.'

'Have we had any updates on what happened to him?'

Moody shook his head. 'I've got eyes on the hospital where we took him, but as far as we know, he's still admitted. We did see Mrs Ackerman and the children visit him this morning, though. They were there through most of the day.'

Lily saw Arthur shift the papers on his lap in her periphery and she turned to look at him.

'So that,' Arthur said, 'is what happened from the perspective of the Auror office. If you take a look in the second folder, though,' Lily set the Aurors' report back in the folder and moved Crouch's report to the top, 'that is what happened from the Department's perspective.'

Lily looked up at Arthur as she opened the folder, but Arthur's expression was, if not completely neutral, it was at least controlled.

_T. Avery and F. Snyde were arrested by Aurors F. Longbottom and J. Williamson at 01:32 23 October 2019 after they were found at the site of a minor disturbance at 21 Thurston Road, Slough…. They were brought back to the Auror Office for questioning…. no information was obtained…._

_Conclusion: Released without charge, 08:34 23 October 2019._

Lily looked up, her expression livid.

'You've got to be fucking kidding me.'

Arthur shook his head. 'I wish we were.'

'And,' Lily looked back at Crouch's report to get the wording exactly right. '"no information was obtained" — that can't be right.'

'It isn't.' Moody said. He pointed back at the folder in her lap with Frank and John's report. 'Underneath their arrest report is the exact transcript of their conversation with Avery and Snyde. We didn't get a lot, not this initial go round, but you rarely get a lot on the first go round.'

Lily nodded. 'I remember.'

Moody tipped his head at her. 'I'm sure. But anyway, we didn't get time to question them again because Crouch's office intervened and released them before Longbottom and Williamson even got back this morning. We're looking for them, obviously, but I don't know that we'll find them. And even then, pulling them in without a formal charge….'

Lily swore and closed her eyes for a long moment. She opened them with a heavy sigh.

'Okay well… that'll either get sorted or it won't. If you find them, you obviously have my approval to pull them in for further questioning.' Moody nodded once and Lily turned to Arthur. 'How does this fit into the larger trends you've been seeing? This looks to me like a clear escalation and the randomness of it —'

Arthur nodded. 'I agree. I'm not wholly surprised based on the climate results from earlier this month, but this is a faster escalation that I anticipated, especially given the nature of most of the activity to date.'

Lily hummed her agreement and thought for a moment. 'How do we get out ahead of this, then?' She looked between Arthur and Moody. 'I feel like we've managed to keep something of a handle on it over the last few years, but now I feel like it's pulling ahead of us and I'm not sure what's happened.'

'I'm not sure either,' Moody said. 'From my perspective, we've already got a team of Aurors on this. They're working _only _on this. And they've been incredibly effective, but we can't work if the Department isn't letting us hold anyone.'

The implication in his words was clear and Lily nodded slowly.

She picked up her pen and made a note on the small notepad beside her desk — _Set up mtg w Crouch pls x _— and watched as the ink melted into the paper. The paper was blank for a moment before another bit of writing appeared in Remus' small, cramped scrawl —

_Will do x _

She wasn't sure what good it would do, meeting with Crouch again — they'd already met so many times to discuss this exact issue and apparently nothing, _nothing, _that she was saying was sinking in. She wasn't sure if he thought that she was joking about his job being on the line, but he was certainly acting as though he wasn't taking her seriously.

And maybe he wasn't doing it because of some deeply ingrained prejudice. Maybe he wasn't disobeying her orders just for the sake of it. Maybe she could read his motives a little more generously, but, honestly, the time for giving Crouch anything resembling the benefit of the doubt had long since passed.

She wrote another note to Remus — _pull CVs for potential DMLE Heads too pls x _—and looked back up at Moody. 'I'll get another meeting with Crouch on the books.'

Moody nodded, but she could see the scepticism on his face.

Lily looked at Arthur.

He cleared his throat. 'I've still got columns running in the _Prophet _every week to oppose those nonsense columns they're still publishing and Perkins is nearly finished putting the final touches on the leaflets for the campaign. We're aiming to have those distributed to every wizarding family in Britain by the end of the next week. I'd like to do some actual liaising with Muggles, but —'

'The Statute,' Lily said, nodding. 'Could you… maybe reach out to people who have chosen to live more visibly in the Muggle world? Ted Tonks springs immediately to mind, but I'm sure there are others.'

Arthur nodded vigorously and started patting his robes. Lily, correctly interpreting the gesture, handed him one of her pens from the cup on her desk. Arthur looked at it for a moment before he looked up at her, an excited look in his eyes.

'Keep it,' Lily laughed. 'I've got loads.'

By the time Arthur and Moody left later that afternoon, it was well gone six. They'd spent hours — _hours _— talking about strategies for moving forward. For all their work, though, Lily didn't feel like they'd come to any solid conclusions.

They were going to keep doing what they were doing — a massive public education campaign about Muggles, the continued dedication of a team of Aurors to Muggle protection — and Arthur was going to propose an amendment to the Crimes Against Muggles Act from a few years ago to include a wider variety of offenses and more stringent penalties.

It would help — if nothing else, it would show her government's continued dedication to these issues — but she felt like they were missing the root of the issue somehow. Like there was something bigger roiling under the surface and they were just missing it.

She didn't have any evidence to account for that. It was just a gut feeling.

But the thing about her gut feelings was that they were hardly ever wrong.

The minute they left, Lily dropped her head into her hands, pressing the heels of her palms hard into her forehead.

On top of everything else that was already frustrating her about this conversation, she was going to have to tell James. The Prime Minister.

_The. Prime. Minister._

She was going to have to tell him about this. About the Ackermans and her plans for moving forward and, possibly, the signs that had been cropping up more and more. She wouldn't tell him about the unsettled feeling in her gut, wouldn't tell him that she worried that none of this, while excellent, was enough. She wouldn't tell him about any of that, but she knew that her fears would colour the way that she presented things.

And, even worse, she knew that if he was even half as clever as he seemed, that he would know she was omitting things.

And she really didn't want to have to do it tonight — partially because she was absolutely fucking exhausted and she really just wanted to go home, make a barely passable dinner, and go to bed, but mostly because she knew that this was going to escalate something, this conversation with James.

She wasn't sure what and she couldn't even explain that feeling if someone pressed her on it — she just had a feeling. A deep certainty that things were going to intensify if she went and talked to him tonight.

She had half a mind to go home for a bit — to just sit on her couch and kick her feet up, maybe even take a nap — but she had stacks of paper on her desk that needed reading and she was always just on the knife's edge of being behind and she couldn't stand feeling like she needed to catch up.

She'd much rather work herself into the ground and be a little bit ahead of where she needed to be. And she was sure that wasn't sustainable, but she'd been doing it her whole career and she hadn't burnt out yet.

It wasn't the best logic, sure, but things had worked out alright so far.

She sighed heavily into her hands once more before she straightened up and, eyes still closed, rolled out her neck. When she opened them, she looked towards the small portrait in the corner of the man wearing a silver wig. He must have felt her gaze turn towards him because he raised an eyebrow at her.

'You'd like a meeting, I presume?'

Lily sighed again and tried, consciously, to pull her shoulders down her back. She nodded, said, 'Please. Thank you, Ethelred,' and grabbed an old mug from the far corner of her desk and drained the last bit of tea inside. It had long gone cold, but it was better than nothing.

Ethelred disappeared and Lily pushed herself to her feet and rolled her neck out again.

She better not be there for a long time tonight. She really needed to get home and go to bed.

As though on cue, she tipped her head back in a yawn. She shook it off as best she could as she crossed the office and grabbed her travelling cloak off the hook behind the door. She was just sliding it over her shoulders when Ethelred reappeared.

'He's ready to see you, ma'am.'

Lily nodded her thanks at him before she grabbed a pinch of Floo powder from the pot on the mantelpiece and tossed it into the flames.

James was standing — The Prime Minister was standing in the centre of his office waiting for her when she stepped out of his grate a minute later. He was frowning as she pulled her wand out of the interior pocket of her robes and began siphoning off the ash. He didn't say anything, though, until her wand was tucked safely back inside her jacket.

'You're early this evening.'

Lily nodded. 'I figured it was about time I stopped showing up after midnight.'

He hummed, his eyes moving over her features with an almost intense scrutiny. 'I want to believe you're just here for a chat, but somehow I don't think that's the case.'

Lily shook her head. 'No. No, I'm not.'

She expected them to launch right into it, but James nodded slowly before he gestured towards the chair, said, 'Well, make yourself at home, then,' and turned to walk towards the kettle on the cart in the corner.

He bustled about for a minute making them tea while Lily hung up her cloak and settled into her chair — well, the chair she'd sat in last time. It wasn't _her _chair.

She crossed her legs and then that didn't really feel right so she uncrossed them again.

James turned, mugs in hand, and Lily stood before she could stop herself to meet him halfway. James raised an eyebrow at her as he handed her her mug. He had the slightest ghost of a smirk on his face for a moment, but he mastered it almost immediately.

'I would've brought it to you.'

'I —' Lily shook her head. 'I don't know.'

James studied her for a moment and Lily took a quick sip of her tea — exhaling hard against the nearly unbearable heat in her mouth — and settled back in her chair.

'You're antsy this evening.' James sat easily in the chair beside her and turned a bit so he was facing her more fully. Lily shook her head with a forced slowness and set her mug down onto her knee.

'I had a long day,' she said. 'I think my exhaustion is finally starting to catch up with me.' She flashed him a smile, but James didn't smile back. He just held her gaze for a moment before he took a sip of his tea and leaned back in his chair.

'So what's brought you here tonight, Evans? Not that I'm not thrilled to see you.' He grinned and she bit the inside of her lip to keep from smiling.

'I'm sure you have some idea,' she said. She took another sip of her tea.

James didn't say anything.

After a moment, she cleared her throat and sat up a bit straighter in her chair.

'Last night, a family in Slough was attacked by a pair of wizards. John Ackerman took a Stunning spell to the chest while his family watched on and their back garden was destroyed.'

James' brow furrowed and she broke off. 'John Ackerman?' She nodded and James' frown deepened. 'You sure?'

She nodded again. 'I take it you saw this on the news.'

He nodded and, when he lifted his mug to take a sip of his tea, she noticed his hand was shaking just slightly.

'And the MP from Slough brought it up at PMQs today. Talking about crime and — but that was your lot?'

She took another sip of her tea.

'We aren't sure what motivated the attack. The Aurors, our police force, weren't able to get much out of them before they were released —'

'They were _released_?!'

Fuck.

She hadn't meant to let _that_ out this early.

She sighed. 'Our Head of Law Enforcement wasn't confident that we had enough evidence to hold them. I've got a meeting scheduled —'

'Is this the bloke you were upset about the last time you were here?'

She nodded. 'Yes.'

'Are you asking for his fucking job, then, because I can't have people endangered because he's —'

She held up her hand and James immediately fell silent. She waited for a moment to make sure that he was going to let her speak before she took a breath.

'I'm going to need you to let me do my job, Prime Minister. But, _yes_, since you brought it up, I do plan on asking him for his job. It was a gross miscarriage of justice for this family and he let people walk free that could've given my Aurors a wealth of information about the wider trends at play. I'm _absolutely_ asking for his job, but I don't appreciate you telling me that I need to.'

She let the silence hang between them for a moment before James sighed heavily. 'I'm sorry. I just — I've got my own stress to deal with at the moment and now I'm finding out that this stuff with you is already leaking into our news and my government and —' He took a deep breath and, when he looked at her, his expression was clearly conciliatory. 'I'm sorry.'

She nodded and took another sip of her tea.

'Anyway,' she said, 'we aren't sure what motivated the attack. Mr Ackerman was stunned in the process of kicking the attackers out of his garden, and Mrs Ackerman and their two children were watching on. Apparently they, the attackers, also levitated his body around the garden in celebration.'

James looked like he was going to be sick and Lily completely sympathised.

'When our Aurors arrived, they immediately arrested the attackers and took Mr Ackerman to A&E and said they'd seen him beaten in the street.'

James nodded. 'Yeah, that's the bit we had reported.'

'Right. Our Aurors also put the garden right and modified the memories of his family so they'd forget the incident. The daughter —'

'Wait. They… they what?'

'It's common practice,' Lily said. She looked down and took a quick sip of her tea before she met his gaze again. 'We — the magical community — are bound by the International Statute of Secrecy which basically requires that we remain invisible to the Muggle population. Inevitably we come into contact, either when we're staging a massive event and hiding magic will be nearly impossible or when things like this happen and Muggles are directly impacted by magic. In those instances, we have to modify the memories of those Muggles so that word doesn't get out about our existence.'

'You….' He shook his head like he was clearing it and sat up straighter in his chair. 'You wipe people's memories just so they don't find out about you?'

'When people come into contact with magic, we have to remove that memory to protect our community. It's the law.'

James' frown deepened. 'And you don't think that's unethical?'

She had half a mind to snap, to say that, yes, of course she thought so, that, yes, she'd been pushing Law Enforcement for _years _to find a better way of dealing with this, both when she was Head and when she became Minister. Still, it was the law, a law she couldn't change on her own, and she'd never successfully developed an alternative course of action.

Lily kept her expression perfectly even as she replied. 'What I think about it doesn't matter.'

'Of course it matters. You're the Minister for Magic.'

'It's an international law,' she said, doing her best to keep her voice steady. 'I can certainly weigh in, and I have done, but the consensus of the magical community is that this is necessary when —'

'Well did anyone think about the fact that maybe the people modifying the memories shouldn't have the final say on this? That maybe they should ask the people being affected by this fucking policy?'

'And how are we going to get their opinions, exactly? We can't very well ask them.'

'I just think it's a bit ridiculous,' James said, and he looked, for the first time since she'd known him, properly angry. 'You can't stomp around Britain wiping people's memories. It's — it's not bloody right.'

'Look,' Lily rested her elbow onto the arm of her chair and leant towards him. 'I understand. And we can talk about this later, really, but right now, we have to talk about what I came here to talk about. Because I'm concerned — and my Heads of Muggle Liaison and the Auror Office agree with me — that this is just the beginning of what might, very quickly, devolve into something worse.'

James' brow furrowed. 'More than the mutterings you were here about a few weeks ago?'

She nodded. 'This evolved from those mutterings. And it did so a hell of a lot quicker than we were expecting. We still have a dedicated team of Aurors working on this and our Muggle Liaison Head is going to draft amended legislation and carry on with our public education campaign, but I'm concerned, we all are, that this is going to be like it was twenty, thirty years ago.'

James frowned. 'What happened twenty years ago?'

'Do you remember that aeroplane that almost hit the M1 in the late eighties? All those stadium fires and derailed trains and things?' James nodded. 'Yeah, well, that was all wizards. We'd made it seem like it was regular Muggle things, hid the real cause of it when we were doing the clean up, but it was wizards. Wizards intent on killing as many Muggles as possible and doing it in the most sensational way they could imagine.

'And they got more and more powerful as the years went by, the group doing it all. I started in the Auror Office after I left school in '97, and things, then, were at a bit of a tipping point. We had quite a time catching the people responsible, but we eventually arrested enough people, got enough information, and the bloke at the centre of it all was arrested and thrown into prison. That was 2000. Things largely went back to normal after that, as normal as they could be. People made a concerted effort to reach out to Muggleborns and talk to their muggle neighbours, that sort of thing. We ran a whole advertising campaign, a "stop hate" kind of thing, and it worked for a while. It was just in the last few years that things really started to get stirring again.'

'What was the catalyst?'

Lily sighed. 'We don't really know for sure. That's what troubles me the most. That and how quickly everything's escalated. But before, there was a centre. A core group of people we needed to get to —'

'Lob the head off the snake.'

She nodded. 'Exactly. This time… if there's a central group — and there probably is, there almost always is, and there were people who we _thought _were affiliated last time but we didn't have enough evidence to pin them. Anyway, whoever is heading that central group, they're being very quiet about it. And the speed with which this has escalated…. I'm worried there was something going on for a lot longer than anyone realised. That they managed to get organised and recruit and develop a plan and now they're just executing.'

'Jesus christ.'

'I know.'

They fell quiet, Lily watching as James turned his mug slowly around in his hands. After a few minutes, he seemed to snap back into himself and he turned to look at her.

'Alright, so, what are we going to do?'

Lily's brow furrowed. 'What do you mean "we"?'

'_We._' James gestured between the two of them with his free hand. 'We need to develop some kind of plan —'

Lily laughed dismissively and shook her head at him. '_We're_ not coming up with any kind of plan. It's too dangerous —'

'You said, and I'm quoting here, "we can explore collaborative opportunities when the proper circumstances arise" — correct me if I'm wrong, _Minister_, but these seem to be the proper circumstances.' His tone was just this side of cold and Lily couldn't help but be a little stunned.

She'd — well, alright, she didn't know him that well, but she'd never imagined he could sound like that.

She downed the rest of her tea, setting the empty mug onto the small table between them to avoid catching his eye.

'I suppose I did say that,' she said. 'But I don't know what you expect to bring to table.' She flicked her eyes back up to his then and found him staring back at her, his expression hard and determined but not angry.

'I'm not entirely useless, you know.'

'No one said you were.'

He scoffed. 'You were certainly implying it just now.'

'I'm just saying that this is a whole different situation from anything you've ever dealt with.'

'And you think I can't learn?'

'I think you don't even know the half of what's been going on and I don't have time to catch you up.' Her voice was quick, maybe a little harsh, but it was true. She didn't have time — not when everything was spiralling out of control as quickly as it was. And maybe it was rude, flat out telling him that there wasn't anything she thought he could bring to the table on this, but honestly, she didn't think she was wrong.

Their worlds were so separate.

He hadn't even known they'd _existed _a few months ago.

Though, maybe, that separation was part of the problem. Maybe he could bring a valuable perspective, could bring ideas they hadn't thought of, couldn't think of, inside of this as they were.

Maybe he had a point.

But — _no, _she didn't want him in on this. And maybe it was her control-freak tendencies (Remus would probably say that that's exactly what it was) but she didn't want him in on this.

It was too dangerous.

Neither of them said anything for a few moments. Just stared at one another as though waiting for the other person to crack first. Lily knew — she didn't know him that well, but she _knew _— that he was going to do what he could to, if not outlast her, to at least match her. The hard determination in his eyes alone —

James sighed and reached up to run a hand through his hair before he leant just a bit closer towards her.

'Look. I know you don't want to spend time sitting here educating me on every conflict our communities have ever had and I don't think that's your responsibility. You're running a government — I don't expect you to come here and teach me. But this affects _my _community. And if you think that I'm honestly just going to let you have complete control over the whole thing while I sit here and twiddle my thumbs, then you don't know me at all.'

She had half a mind to open her mouth and say that, really, she _didn't_ know him at all, but she thought it best to keep silent. And anyway, James had carried on talking.

'I know that my capacity for influence will be limited — by what I can say to my communities, by my ability to effect any change in your part of the country, by my own understanding of the way this all works — but that doesn't mean I can't bring _something _to the table. I can — put out alerts for people on our news, I can start public education campaigns about safety, I can — There are things I can do. And even if I can't help you catch these people or work out what's going on, I can at least bring this information to my country as best I can to make sure that they're protected.

'Because as much as wizards believe they're in danger from non-magical people, it looks to me like that's a well-worn two way street. And we have the added disadvantage of not even knowing you exist.'

He let those words hang in the air between them for a moment before he leant forward just a touch further.

'People are vulnerable. It's my job to protect them. To advocate for them. Please let me do that.'

Lily was quiet for a minute.

Though a massive part of her was still intent on just flat out refusing him, she couldn't deny that he was right.

He was right to want to advocate for the people in his country. He was _right _that he had just as much — if not more — of a stake in this than she did. He was right that he needed to be involved in these conversations instead of having her show up every few weeks with the next catastrophe.

And she knew it was dangerous for him to get involved — she couldn't think of another time in history when the Prime Minister had been brought in to work this closely with the Minister for Magic, though, just because she couldn't remember it, didn't necessarily mean that it hadn't happened — but she also knew that he wasn't likely to give up.

She knew that she wouldn't give up if roles were reversed.

And so, finally, she sighed heavily and looked up at him. He was looking at her with an almost desperate hope in his eyes, though the rest of his expression was cool. Calm.

She tucked a piece of hair back behind her ear and leant back in her seat. 'Alright, then.'

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**Come find me on Tumblr! Same username x**


	6. Chapter 6

**sorry for the delay this week, my friends - the kid and I were at Disney World and I didn't bring my laptop and I honestly couldn't be arsed to figure out how to post from mobile across all three platforms this weekend.**

**I hope these chapters were worth the wait.**

* * *

Despite having gotten what he wanted, James spent a good bit of time over the next few months quietly reeling from the implications of working this closely with Lily. Of getting to know the magical world in a way that, apparently, no one in his position had ever done.

Before she'd left that night in October, she'd summoned — literally _summoned_, like flown through the air, tapping gently on his window so she could let them inside summoned — a few books for him to read on the history of wizard/Muggle relations (the word 'muggle' still felt so odd in his mouth when he said it — he couldn't quite believe it was an actual word) and had sent him copies of the arrest files for the people who'd attacked the Ackermans along with a list of people who were implicated in the last round of unrest who had since been released.

She'd also included a note that said that _while I've sent these by courier this time, I'll be sending things by owl from now on. It's much faster and, honestly, getting these papers to the courier was nearly a disaster. My poor assistant is still in a right state about it._

He tried not to think too much about what 'by owl' meant — it was best, honestly, if he just accepted the reality of Lily's world as it was instead of constantly trying to wrap his mind around it all.

Understanding would come with time.

He was patient.

And when he had an owl lightly clicking its beak against his window a few days later, James didn't let himself feel too overwhelmed by it. By all the questions. The _how does this bird know where I am _and _how did it carry that massive package of papers _and _why in the world is _this _how wizards send things to people_.

He just accepted the package as though this were completely normal and stood silently as the owl hooted at him and then took off into the night.

They'd decided that they'd meet weekly — Lily, initially, had suggested a meeting every fortnight, but James wanted to touch base as often as possible without completely overwhelming both their schedules — on Friday nights. People hardly lingered on Friday evening — in her office or his — and so it was easier to schedule for a more manageable seven in the evening instead of having to wait until late into the night.

The schedule was slightly complicated by the fact that, as they neared the end of October and moved into November, James' life became what can only be accurately referred to as an utter shitshow.

The autumn budget had sent people — a predictable group of people, but still — absolutely over the fucking cliff because of the amount of money that had to be allocated to the referendum vote, people were upset with him for travelling as often as he did to Brussels to meet with EU leaders, people were livid that it was taking as long as it was to ensure that all the ballots were printed and properly distributed and _yes, _it was a predictable group of people and he knew that they, mostly, just wanted something to be livid about, but it was exhausting getting up in front of Parliament every week and dealing with question after question after _question _from people who were determined to undermine everything that he and his government were working towards.

It also didn't help that, sometimes, they weren't far off the mark when they accused his government of not being ready for the vote that was supposed to happen in December because he'd, like an idiot, promised it would happen before the year was out.

This was why, Dorcas had snapped at him late November during their cabinet meeting, she'd urged him not to put a date to this referendum vote.

They finally scheduled the vote for January and it was _fine, _but James still couldn't help but feel like it was a complete and total cock-up.

And though his meetings with Lily might've been a source of all sorts of additional stress — he was, after all, meeting with her to discuss the fact that certain people were quite keen to injure or murder as many "Muggles" as was humanly possible — he actually found that his time spent with her was some of the best time in his schedule every week.

He was sure that was wrong, was sure that he wasn't supposed to enjoy these meetings, but aside from their initial row about it — a row that could hardly be called a row in retrospect — Lily was an absolute joy to work with. She was clever and driven and her ability to think outside the box or jump two, three steps ahead of where they were in conversation sometimes made him feel like he was running along behind her logic trying to keep up.

She was easily one of the smartest people he'd ever worked with. Had ever _met._

It made it all that much more of a shame that they were meeting because there was some kind of violent rebellion stirring on her side of things.

And between that — this feeling of being constantly awed by her — and the quiet but persistent feelings that hadn't left him since that first night back in March —

Well, it really was just such a shame that they weren't meeting on better circumstances.

Especially because, sometimes, he thought that he caught her looking at him with a look on her face that betrayed feelings that mirrored the ones he was carrying around in his own chest.

No matter how he felt about her, though, he refused to let that come in the middle of what was a fantastically productive working relationship. For all Lily's concerns about what he'd bring to the table — concerns that had hurt but he couldn't deny were valid at the time — they had managed to make a fair bit of progress. He'd put out alerts for those people that Lily had identified and, between the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary, they'd managed to develop and roll out a few educational campaigns. There was still a lot of work left to do — especially now that Lily was having to adjust to a new Head of Law Enforcement and catch her up to speed — but he was confident in the things they'd achieved so far.

There were still whispers of things, Lily said. The columns had disappeared from the paper and the networks had started to retreat underground and, while she'd admitted to him at the beginning of December that that was making her a little nervous, James couldn't help but see it as proof that their work was registering.

That people were aware of the attention these issues were getting and were aware that it was something the government was going to be taking seriously.

Tonight, the last Friday before Christmas, they were sitting in his office, elbow-deep in a plate of mince pies and some hot, incredibly sweet drink she'd brought with her — butterbeer or buttered beer or something — and, after trying their best to work despite the sugar flying through their veins, they'd finally given in to the inevitable and decided that it was alright if, for once, they let themselves relax a bit. They chatted about random things for a while — the early years of their careers, sport, school — and it was such a nice change from the things that they normally talked about that James could feel himself getting a little giddy.

She was just so easy to talk to and he could feel himself getting carried away but he also didn't mind. He didn't mind at all.

He just couldn't believe some of the things she was telling him. He couldn't believe that those things were her life. He could see why, when she talked about her school, she got this misty, sort of far away look in her eye, why the magic and the allure of it had lasted all this time. He'd never really cared for boarding schools as a concept — and it hadn't been an option for him growing up anyway — but this?

This school was full of ghosts and had a forest that, according to Lily, was full of things that would definitely kill you if they got the chance, but there was a lake, and the squid that lived in it was nice (according to Lily), and there was nothing better, she said, than lying on the grass beside the lake on those warm, sunny days in June and letting all the stress of exams just float away. And she loved the easy life she'd had with her mates, the routines they'd made together — it was so easy to see them, then, and she missed the simplicity of that. How she'd wake up and roll onto her side and Marlene and Mary would be there or she'd go down into the common room and Remus would be waiting to go to breakfast or she'd meet Ted in the Great Hall — it was all so much easier when they'd lived together like that, and adult friendship had its own benefits, its own beautiful nuances — especially because you really knew who you cared about by who you bothered to keep in touch with — but there was something about the ease of it all when they were in school.

He could see, in the wistful look on her face, just how wonderful that had been, and he felt his own chest screw up with nostalgia for things he'd never experienced himself.

She was in the middle of telling him some story now — about that time in her sixth year when she and Remus had snuck a load of firewhiskey ('And butterbeer,' she was quick to reassure him, 'it wasn't just the hard stuff!') and Ted Tonks into Gryffindor Tower for a post-Quidditch ('Kwidditch? What's — _what_?') celebration — and she was almost breathless with laughter as she recalled the finer details.

He felt similarly breathless watching her.

'So, Ted,' she took another swig of her drink. 'Ted had brought up this full tray of food, right, that he'd nicked from the kitchens on his way up to our common room because the Hufflepuff common room is right near the kitchens and it was the least he could do since we were letting him gatecrash. Well, Remus — who, by the way insists _to this day _that it wasn't him, but I _know _it was him because I bloody well saw him — somehow put a fucking _Sonorous _charm on a bunch of the sweets. That charm,' she added, seeing James' confusion, 'amplifies the volume of your voice. We use it to, like, announce World Cup matches to massive stadiums, and so kids are eating these and then just _screaming _in the common room and — I mean, I guess it isn't that funny,' she said, despite the laughter still bubbling out of her and the tears in her eyes, 'but oh my god, we were just _dying. _And then McGonagall, our Head of House, came upstairs and no one was laughing anymore. But honestly, I think that was one of our best post-match parties.'

She flicked the tears off her cheeks, her breath still coming in waves as she tried to settle herself down, and James' smile tugged even wider across his face.

'It sounds brilliant,' he said. 'I wish I could've been there.'

'James,' she leant forward and rested her palm on his desk, her eyes shining. 'You would love quidditch. _Love _it. I'll have to take you to a match sometime because it'll just — it'll blow your mind.'

His smile widened — he couldn't help it when she was looking at him like that. When her eyes were bright and her smile was so big it took over her whole face and she had a bit of butterbeer foam on her upper lip. He couldn't help but smile at her when she was like that because _god _if she wasn't the most beautiful person in the whole world when she was like that.

'Will it?'

She nodded vigorously and reached up to brush a piece of hair out of her eyes. 'When I saw my first quidditch match —' She fell quiet for a moment, her gaze shifting off into the distance as she remembered. When she met his eyes again, the feeling in her expression —

It was stunning.

'I never really cared that much about football or rugby or anything, but there was just something about quidditch. It's so — _fast_.' She laughed. 'That sounds stupid, but it's the best way I can think to describe it. Like, it's so overwhelming because so much is happening at once and you know you can't catch every detail but you can't help but try. And like your blood is racing and —' she took a deep breath and smiled at him. 'It's just amazing, you know?'

James swallowed and nodded slowly. 'Yeah, Evans. I know exactly what you mean.'

Their eyes caught for a moment — one breath, two — before she took another quick drink of her butterbeer and set it down on top of his desk.

'I should probably go,' she said. 'I feel bad that I've taken up your whole evening.'

James shook his head. 'No. I didn't have plans anyway. If you weren't here, I was just gonna sit on my sofa and watch _Love, Actually _for the millionth time already this month.'

She laughed. 'What's that?'

'You don't know _Love, Actually_?'

She shrugged. 'If it's something from after, like, 1997, I probably don't know about it.'

His brow furrowed. 'I thought you were Muggleborn? Did you, like, not have this stuff?'

Something stiffened in her expression, though, if pressed, he probably wouldn't have been able to pinpoint the exact difference. There was just something slightly more rigid about her now, something tenser.

She half shrugged again and moved like she was going to stand, but James reached across his desk and rested his hand on hers. Her eyes flicked down to their hands before she met his gaze.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I'm — I've obviously said something that upset you, and I didn't meant to. I'm sorry. You can go if you like, obviously, but, uhm — I'd like you to stay. But only if you want,' he added, hastily pulling his hand back from hers and wrapping it around his glass of butterbeer instead.

She looked down to where her hand was still resting on the desk between them and was quiet for a long moment. When she finally looked up, she looked a bit more guarded than she had done a few minutes before.

'You didn't know that that would get to me,' she said. 'It's fine.'

James shook his head at her. 'It's not fine. I — I feel like such a prat. I really am sorry.'

Lily sniffed and sat up a bit straighter in her chair. 'Really, it's fine. You couldn't've known that that would be a particularly sore spot for me. I know you didn't mean anything by it and, honestly, no harm done.'

Lily picked up her glass of butterbeer again and took a long sip. When she picked her head back up again and looked at him, her glass was nearly empty.

She pulled her wand out of her pocket and waved it, and James watched as her glass magically refilled to the brim, foam and all. She raised an eyebrow at him and James understood the question without her having to ask. He knew a peace offering when he saw one, so he tipped his head at her and slid the glass a bit away from him on the desk and she waved her wand again.

He eyed her over his newly filled glass.

'You're sure this is alright to drink?'

She smiled at him, grabbed her glass, and took a long pull off her own drink. 'If it isn't, I'm in a bit of trouble, aren't I?'

They both sat quietly for a few minutes, drinking their fresh glasses of butterbeer. Lily was about halfway through hers when she sighed heavily and James looked up at her again.

'I'm sorry about that,' she said. 'Before. I just don't really talk about all that that much.'

James brow furrowed. 'What?'

'It was something I struggled with for a long time,' she continued, almost like she hadn't heard him. 'Being magical but having a muggle family and….' She half shrugged and took another drink of her butterbeer. 'I struggled with it. That's why I sort of snapped at you earlier.'

'You don't have to explain yourself. It's — I get that. Identity is… I don't think "massively confusing" really even covers it, but I think you know what I mean.'

Lily looked up at him over the rim of her glass. She didn't say anything for a moment. Her eyes just held his before she started slowly tracing his face. Her eyes flicked back up to his and she smiled, the right side of her mouth hitching up just slightly.

'Thanks.'

'It's nothing.'

She looked like she wanted to say something else, but, she took a breath, leant back in her chair, and James watched her expression lighten considerably.

'So anyway, I feel like we're always talking about me when I'm here. Why don't you tell me a story.'

James raised an eyebrow. 'Of my _youth_?'

Lily half shrugged. 'Tell me any story you like. I just want to know more about you.'

'I'm sure you know a good bit about me.'

She shook her head. 'I only know a few things.'

He couldn't help smiling then. 'Like what?'

She cocked an eyebrow at him — she clearly knew what he was up to — but she indulged him anyway.

'I know that this Brexit stuff is your living nightmare, I know that you take your tea with one sugar. I know that you were a solicitor before you became a politician — though I guess you're technically still a solicitor, I don't know.' She waved her hand and he laughed.

'I know you grew up in Tooting and I'm _guessing _you still have a house there because you still represent them? I know you're a year older than me.' She smiled cheekily and he snorted.

'Anything else?'

She shook her head. 'Nothing I can think of. Or that I can articulate.'

He raised an eyebrow at her. 'What's that mean?'

She shrugged hastily and took a drink of her butterbeer. 'So anyway,' she set her now empty glass down on the table. 'I reckon it's time I get a story or two. See if you can match my _Sonorous_ story.'

And oh, did he have stories.

They spent the next few hours regaling one another with story after story, each of them, clearly, trying to outdo the other. And he had a fair few stories up his sleeve — the time he and Sirius hid a dictaphone in the ceiling of their geography classroom in sixth form and set it to play a tape that they'd recorded a bunch of nonsense on, the time he and Sirius tried to re-enact the defenestration of Prague after learning about it in history — but Lily and her mates had gotten up to some absolutely _mental _things at school and it was honestly impossible to compete.

Some of it was probably just magic — levitating your friends was probably significantly less impressive when it was just something you could _do_ — but brewing up potions to change themselves into other people? Mapping every single secret passage out of the castle just so they could sneak down to the village after hours?

Lily and her mates were absolute legends.

And the more she talked about her time at school — all the crazy shit they'd gotten up to but also how intense it had been, how formative it had been — the more and more nostalgic he felt. And it was weird, getting nostalgic about things that he hadn't experienced, but there was just something about the way she was talking about it that was resonating with him. It was the depth of feeling, maybe, or the fact that you always looked back on things like that — school and friendship and the idiotic things you got up to when you were a kid — in a very particular way once you've gotten to their age. When time has sufficiently dulled the intensity and the drama of it all and you could finally see, clearly, how important those experiences and those people had been in your life.

There was something about thinking about this with her right now. And maybe it was dramatic to say it — it was definitely dramatic — but he had a very similar feeling about this moment. This one right now, sitting at his desk with Lily and laughing about things that neither of them had thought about in twenty years.

It felt dramatic to say it, but this could become one of those moments that he remembered. One of those moments he looked back on and thought, yes. I have been shaped by this. This moment. This woman.

There was something about it all that he felt deeply certain about. No matter how nonsensical that sounded.

'Alright.' Lily stretched her arms overhead and turned her wrist to check her watch. 'It's genuinely late now. I should let you get to bed.'

He wanted to say, again, that, really, she didn't have to leave. That he was happy to sit up all night chatting with her. That, maybe, they could just go up to the residence and sit on his couch and pop on a film and eat popcorn and mince pies and talk until morning.

Instead, he nodded and, as though his body had been waiting for it, he yawned. 'Yeah,' he said, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. 'I guess you're right.'

She smiled at him as she pushed up out of her chair. 'Have you got any big plans for the holiday?'

James shook his head as he stood and followed her across the office.

'My brother Sirius is coming over for lunch, but that's about it. Mum and Dad are in Bangladesh visiting Mum's family. There was talk about my flying out there for a week or so — especially from Mum because she is just _laying_ on the guilt about how busy I am — but things have been a nightmare around here recently and I really just can't get away.'

Lily frowned at him. 'I'm sorry.'

James waved his hand. 'It's fine. I can only take so much of my aunties teasing my dad for getting sunburned, anyway. And the vote'll be over in early January and then I'll have my life back.'

She smirked. 'Will you?'

He laughed. 'I'm choosing to believe that, yes.'

James lifted her cloak off the rack and held it open in front of her. Lily looked at him for a moment, her left eyebrow slightly raised, before she turned slowly and slid her arms into the sleeves.

When she turned around again, they were closer than they were before.

They stood there for a second and James watched as her eyes travelled from his, watched as her eyes skimmed over his features, watched as they lingered on his lips. Her eyes had darkened, just a touch, when they met his again, but if he expected her to step forward, to kiss him, to….

She was hesitating on the brink of something. He couldn't quite tell what, but she shifted her weight just slightly like she was considering stepping forward.

Her eyes flicked down to his mouth again.

James exhaled and his gaze flickered, for just a moment, down to her lips.

They were quiet for a moment, neither one of them moving, before James cleared his throat and he brought his eyes back to hers. 'So what about you?'

She frowned, her forehead wrinkling a bit. 'What about me?'

'Holiday plans.'

'Oh.' She shook her head. 'No. Well, Remus and I talked about doing a friends Christmas lunch with some of our old school mates, but I don't know if we've decided on anything? I'll have to ask him, actually.'

James nodded slowly and rocked his weight back onto his heels. 'That'll be fun.'

'Yeah,' Lily nodded, her smile widening slightly. 'And maybe Remus'll bring his new boyfriend. He's been refusing to let me meet him and it's _so _annoying.'

James snorted. 'Well, I can imagine it might be a bit overwhelming to find out that he's best mates with the Minister for Magic.'

Lily rolled her eyes. 'Whatever. I'm still his best mate and I have every right to meet this man that's stolen all his free time.'

'If it makes you feel any better,' James said, 'Sirius doesn't let me meet the people he's dating either. Though he says it's because I'm "insufferable and embarrassing", so maybe it has nothing to do with my position.'

Lily pressed her lips together. 'That's terrible.'

James hummed knowingly and her smile cracked through. 'He loves me really. He's just too emotionally stunted to show it properly.'

'So he's just British, you mean?'

He snorted. 'Yeah.'

They both fell quiet again and James realised, now that he was paying attention, that they'd drifted even closer as they'd been talking.

He hadn't even noticed. But now here they were, barely a foot apart.

He noticed now.

He was just about to do something or maybe say something — he didn't know what and his brain was positively clunking along behind him — when Lily cleared her throat.

'Well, I'm off.'

James nodded a little jerkily. 'Off. Right.'

She held his gaze for a moment, a kind of conflicted look in her eyes, before she finally seemed to come to a decision about whatever he was mulling over. She stepped forward and pushed up onto her toes and, before James' mind really even caught up to what she was doing, she pressed a soft kiss to his cheek, her lips just catching the corner of his mouth. And it would be so easy — so unbelievably easy — to just turn his head, to press his lips to hers, and he could feel it, the anticipation of that building in his gut, but before he'd had time to even properly register anything that was happening, Lily'd stepped back and she was looking at him with an absolutely indescribable look on her face and James was finding it impossible to breathe.

If his outside was looking anything like his insides, he was sure that he looked absolutely wrecked just then.

She reached up and fastened the button on the neck of her cloak, her eyes on his. And it wasn't indecent — she was buttoning up, for god's sake — but there was something about the look on her face. About the slow, slightly fumbling movement of her fingers.

He was ridiculous. He was utterly, _utterly_, fucking ridiculous.

She cleared her throat and he felt like he jolted back into himself.

'Good night, James.'

He inhaled.

Exhaled.

'Good night, Lily. Happy Christmas.'

She smiled, a warm, soft smile that made his chest ache. 'You, too.'

And before he could say anything else, she turned on her heel, tossed a bit of powder into the fire, and then she was gone.

* * *

**find me on tumblr - same username :)**


	7. Chapter 7

**See you all next Saturday at our regularly scheduled time x**

* * *

The amount of time that James spent thinking about Lily over the next few weeks was, honestly, probably a little embarrassing.

And he didn't even have enough work to keep him busy. Outside of making sure that the last minute details for the referendum were coming together, the impending holiday ensured that he had a full two weeks of mostly uninterrupted free time. No matter how much he tried to use that time to catch up on a lot of the things that had been set a bit further down his to do list — finally responding to some of his correspondence, actually talking to his parents on the phone for more than ten minutes at a time — it still wasn't enough to keep him busy.

He had things to do, but he wasn't _busy, _and when he wasn't busy, his mind was free to wander and, good god, did it always seem to wander the same direction these days.

He just couldn't get Lily out of his head. The bright, easy way she laughed. Her silly, almost meandering way of telling stories. The look in her eyes after she'd kissed him.

Well, kissed his cheek.

He just couldn't get any of it out of his head.

She was there in the back of his mind as he slashed his signature across hundreds of Christmas cards — something Margot had insisted was a complete waste of his time but he'd been adamant that people would know if they'd used a stamp and he needed something mindless to do while he watched _Big Fat Quiz _anyway — she was there when he was giving interviews (not the safest, he'd admit) and when he was reading through the various reports that were now rolling into his office.

No matter what he did, his mind was always a little preoccupied with her. What she was doing, whether or not she was having a nice holiday, whether or not she was getting the rest that she so obviously deserved because hopefully things had calmed down for her like they had for him.

It was weird knowing someone that he wasn't able to just… call or text or email. He had literally no way of being in touch with her — unless he was going to figure out how to find a magical owl and, though the thought had crossed his mind once or twice at three in the morning, he recognised the absurdity of it no matter how appealing it had seemed at the time — and that was, probably, why he started spiralling out in his head so much.

He honestly just missed chatting with her. Missed her laugh. Her stories. Missed that way she looked at him when he was being particularly cheeky and she was trying not to laugh but she couldn't quite help it.

God, he loved making her laugh.

This morning was of much the same theme as the last two weeks — he brought some report or another to breakfast and he sort of read it and tried to pretend that he wasn't thinking about Lily — but, for once, he was finding that last bit a _touch _easier than usual this morning.

Sirius had popped over for breakfast this morning, which was nice because they hadn't been seeing as much of each other since he'd started this job, and within two seconds of sitting down — a massive fry up in front of him — Sirius was already ranting at full speed.

And maybe it was rude to be reading a report while Sirius was over, but James had to have something to read through or he was going to completely lose touch with reality.

Still, he was two seconds into reading the report from the Treasury he'd brought to breakfast that morning (_Under the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Act (TAFA 2010), the Treasury is required….), _before his mind started to wander again.

He wondered what she was doing right now. If she was enjoying this, honestly, really beautiful morning or if she was sitting in her office — which, she'd told him once, was _underground _— wading through some report or another.

He was sure that he knew the answer, but he hoped that she was out just… enjoying her morning. Maybe sitting outside with a cup of tea and just looking at the sky. And once he started thinking along those lines, he found himself wishing that he could be there with her, sitting in her kitchen that, despite being a mystery to him, he'd somehow manufactured in his head, cups of tea in their hands, looking out the window and just sitting quietly together or maybe softly chatting about something or another, something easy, like quidditch and silly charms and school and growing up —

God, he was lovesick.

'James.'

James' head snapped up and his eyes found Sirius' across the table. Sirius was sitting there, arms crossed, eyebrow raised, and an absolutely insufferable expression on his face.

Classic.

James looked back down at the report he was reading ("reading") and drew a line under a random sentence. 'What?'

'Did you hear anything I said?'

James sighed heavily and turned over the report and ran his eyes over the chart on the back. 'Of course I did. You're literally impossible to ignore.'

Sirius leant back on the chair and adjusted the cross of his arms. 'Then what've I said?'

'First of all, put the chair legs down —'

'Okay, _Mum_.'

'And second, you were banging on about what a crime it is that Idris Elba is straight and asking me who I'd need to bribe to make sure he's the next Bond because you "need to see him running, basically naked, out of some waves or you'll _literally_ _die_," and, just now, you were saying that you saw this "absolutely gorgeous" man at the club the other night and it was "dreadfully inconvenient" that people know you're my brother because it means you can't misbehave in public anymore because then you end up in the papers and "not even in a fun way".' James' eyes flicked up to Sirius'. 'Have I missed anything?'

'Yes.' Sirius tipped his chin up as he picked up his tea. 'You missed the fact that I was _going _to buy that gorg floral crop top from H&M but then Trev said that it made me look like a cheap JVN knock off and then I literally cried about it for a week.'

James snorted and looked back down at his papers. 'That happened yesterday. You can't've cried for a week.'

'Well, I exerted the same amount of emotional energy, which basically amounts to the same thing.'

'You and I both know that's bollocks.' James underlined another, this time slightly less random, sentence in his report.

James thought Sirius might press him on that, but he was apparently going to let that go.

'What are you pretending to read anyway?'

James glanced up at Sirius. 'A report from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. And I'm not pretending.'

Sirius snorted. 'Yeah, alright.'

James looked up at him. 'It's a TAFA Quarterly Report.'

Sirius smirked. 'Riveting.'

James rolled his eyes. 'Not everything I read is exciting.'

'_Nothing _you read for this job is exciting. Not that it matters because you aren't even reading that report anyway.'

'I — Sirius, I _am_.' He sounded like he was defending himself against one of his old school teachers and James knew, the moment he'd taken that tone, that he'd lost.

Sirius raised his eyebrows at him. 'Please. You've got that sad little James face on and you're twirling that pen around in your hand. That's not how you look when you read.'

'How do you know what I look like when I read?'

Sirius rolled his eyes. 'Everyone knows what you look like when you're reading. You get all frowny and you hunch over the paper and you've got the damn pen in a death grip and you keep muttering to yourself. I saw you like that for, like, months at a time before exams. You think I'm likely to forget that?'

'Why would you _remember _that?'

Sirius waved his hand. 'Because you're too intense. It's gross. But anyway, stop distracting me. What are you thinking about, because it sure as shit isn't the freezing of terrorist assets?'

'Well, actually, we froze £70,000 pounds-worth of —'

Sirius held up his hand. '_I don't care. _You don't care. And I'm going to get this out of you anyway, so you might as well just tell me.'

James looked back down at the report and started twirling his pen absently. 'Though it was calculated using the exchange rate from the 30th of September, so I'm not sure —'

'_James._' Sirius' tone was just this side of actually whining and James knew that he would have stomped his foot if they'd been standing.

'I just —' James dropped his pen onto the table and reached up to run his hand through his hair. 'Honestly, Sirius, I'm just thinking about work.'

'Lies.'

'What?! How do you — how would you even know that?'

Sirius drew a circle in the air around James' head. 'That's not your work face.'

'For fucks sake.'

'Look,' Sirius picked up his tea and took a quick sip. 'You want to keep all this,' he drew his mug in some vague shape in James' direction, 'inside your little head? Fine. Drive yourself round the twist about it and then come talk to me in a week like you always do. I'm just laying out the red carpet for you right now so we can skip all your usual nonsense.'

James crossed his arms. 'I don't have usual nonsense.'

Sirius snorted. 'Please. You get all Byronic hero and it's _so _annoying.'

'I do not!'

'Whatever. Are you ready now or should I put you in my diary for next week?'

'I —'

He should talk about it. Lily. Maybe.

But what was there to talk about, really? They were colleagues — friends at _best_ — and so there was nothing to really talk about except for the fact that he'd decided — or his heart had decided — that he liked her. That he liked her a _lot. _But they were colleagues and so he didn't really even need to talk about this with Sirius because he was just going to remain cool and calm and professional.

Or he was going to remain at least one of those things.

And anyway, how would he talk about Lily with Sirius anyway? As far as anyone knew, James hadn't been meeting with anyone outside his normal schedule and, as Sirius well knew, James hadn't really left Number 10 since he'd moved into the damn place, and so where was he supposed to have met her?

Sirius wouldn't care that James would have met her through work — hell, he probably would have encouraged it because "it's just so naughty, James", but then he'd have to come up with some back story for her — where she worked, what she did, how they met — and that, really, was the wrench in it all.

Because, as far as Sirius was concerned, Lily didn't exist.

Nothing about her — her world, her magic, her beautiful smile — existed.

How was he supposed to explain that?

James sighed. 'I hate you.'

Sirius smirked and took another sip of his tea. 'Join the club, honey.'

James rolled his eyes. 'Trev was right. You are a JVN knock off.'

Sirius' jaw actually dropped and James immediately burst out laughing. 'God, I want a picture of your face. I want it framed over my desk downstairs.'

'You are mean. And awful. And I'm not your brother anymore.'

James just carried on laughing and Sirius crossed his arms. 'I mean it. I was never formally adopted anyway, so it's all very easy to cancel.'

James shook his head and started stacking the papers on the table into a neat stack. 'Oh, relax, posho.'

Sirius frowned. 'I'm not a posho.'

James smirked up at him. 'Mhmm.'

'Whatever. You don't want to talk about your straight boy feelings today? _Fine._ I'll be here in a week when they've finally gotten to be too much for you and you crack.'

'How do you know that's going to happen?'

Sirius shot him a look. 'Do you remember Kacie in Year Eleven? When you were all "Sirius",' Sirius dropped his voice low in what was, apparently, supposed to be an imitation of James, '"I don't like Kacie! We're just mates!" and then you came to me, like, a week later, crying about how funny she was and how good she smelled?'

James felt his face heat and he picked up his cup of tea to buy himself a moment.

'I was fifteen. Leave me alone.'

'I'm just saying.' Sirius smirked. 'This,' he drew a circle around James' head again. 'This is just like that.'

James crossed his arms. 'How do you know this is about a woman anyway?'

Sirius rolled his eyes and titled his head back to finish off his tea. 'Please. You're only a mess when it comes to women. You're annoyingly composed when it comes to everything else.'

James touched a hand to his chest. 'Is that a compliment?'

Sirius groaned as he pushed up from the table and grabbed his plate. 'Shut up. No.'

James just hummed knowingly as Sirius stalked off into the kitchen and, after smiling smugly to himself for a moment, he grabbed his own dishes and followed suit.

* * *

Despite having successfully avoided getting into it all with Sirius the other day at breakfast, the mere suggestion that James was obsessing (well, the suggestion from someone other than James himself who knew, quite well, that he was obsessing) was enough to send him into a full death spiral.

Because he hadn't really thought about it all before, hadn't needed to add dimension to it when it was just him and Lily in his office. He hadn't needed to complicate it because it was complicated enough, wasn't it, the fact that they were leading parallel governments that were nudging ever closer to something that, from the way Lily sometimes talked about it, could be all out war.

It was complicated enough without having to add in that additional factor. The one where she technically didn't exist.

Though that wasn't entirely accurate was Lily was concerned. Her parents weren't magical, so she'd have been registered. She had an NHS number. Had gone to regular primary school. He had no idea what would've happened to her records — or how someone hadn't figured out that she wasn't attending school after the age of eleven — but anyway, none of that was the point. The point was that, okay, she did _technically _exist, but that she, as she was, didn't.

The Lily who'd gone to Hogwarts and was an absolute _cracker _at Charms and Potions, the Lily who took on one of the hardest jobs she could after school, the one who gave so much of her life — as Auror, as Department Head, as Minister — to make things even a little better. That Lily — who worried even when she didn't show it, who was driven and clever and fucking hilarious — that Lily didn't exist.

Not by any verifiable measure, anyway.

Not that James was necessarily concerned with verifiable measures.

But still, he couldn't explain to Sirius that he was rapidly falling into an emotional hole over her. Because to explain it to Sirius was to get into all of it — mostly because Sirius always had a million questions but also because, once James uncorked, it was damn near impossible to shut the _hell _up again — and not only could he not get into it, he wasn't even ready to think through what it was that he was actually feeling yet.

And damn Sirius for being right, but James wasn't ready to apply logic to any of this yet. He just wanted to feel it for a minute. See if his gut couldn't sort things out.

Especially because, honestly, he had no idea where her head was at in all this.

It really couldn't have come at a more annoying time, this. It, of course, had waited until he'd had very little else to do — well, comparatively — before it unloaded itself on him and made it so that he had nothing better to do with his extra brain space than obsess over what Lily was thinking about him and their relationship — assuming they could call it that — and what, exactly, could even happen between them anyway. And, alright, he'd been thinking about her before, on and off, and it wasn't like he hadn't realised just how stunning she was ages ago — he'd been practically speechless that first night they met and it was only partially because of the fact that she was setting his damn desk on fire — but this was different.

Because he knew, now, that he was going to be seeing a lot more of her, and he thought — and maybe he was wrong — that maybe there was potential there. That maybe they'd keep seeing one another, even after wizards stopped trying to murder muggles in their houses in the middle of the night, that maybe they could be friends.

But then she'd kissed him and it was so close to being an actual kiss and she'd had a look in her eyes that had nearly knocked him flat and damn it all, he just couldn't think of anything else.

And then he remembered that minor detail of _wizards trying to murder muggles in their houses in the middle of the night _and everything went up in flames again.

He spent the next few days making sure that all the details for the 16th January vote had been pulled together — which mostly just meant that he was calling and emailing everyone else to make sure that their bits were done and then talking to the journalist of the day to try and push the message out. They ramped up ballot education, too, over this last week, and they knew that people weren't really paying attention to them right now — most people were still in post-Christmas food comas and could only pick their heads up off the sofa long enough to do some last minute organising for New Years Eve (a state he sympathised with and, honestly, was envious of) —but, paying attention or not, he needed to continue to push the message, because this three option ballot was confusing and he needed people to understand how the Electoral Commission would be counting ballots so that there was as little push back as possible.

He knew there was going to be push back — especially if Rees Mogg and his league of twats didn't get their way — but hopefully he could head a lot of it off with very clear instructions about how it was all going to unfold.

Hopefully.

He was in the middle of some such planning on New Years Eve — Sirius had invited him out and sworn that they'd have a "standard, boring night that not even the fucking Tories could hate you for", and, as tempting as that sounded, he really did have a few things that he needed to pull together before everything opened up properly on the 2nd of January. Sirius hadn't been happy about it — especially if his last text, _why are you always so mean to me DOES OUR BROTHERHOOD MEAN NOTHING TO YOU?!, _was anything to go by — but James had been working a little slower over the Christmas period than usual and so he hadn't gotten nearly as much done as he'd anticipated.

That was always the damn case, though, wasn't it, falling short of the incredibly high standards that he set for himself.

Though better that than not setting the standards high enough, he supposed.

So, instead of going out to some pub or party or whatever with Sirius, James was sat, once again, in his office late into the evening surrounded by stacks of mostly organised papers. And he was getting on, too — he might actually get to bed at a decent hour, or, you know, watch the New Years fireworks on telly — when the flames in his fireplace turned bright green and James nearly rocketed out of his chair in fright. As it was, he was still sitting in his seat when Lily stepped through the grate, his hand pressed to his chest, as he tried to get his frantic heartbeat to slow.

'Jesus christ.' He sounded breathless and he thought she might laugh at him, but she just frowned a little as she pulled out her wand and began cleaning her cloak.

'Sorry,' she said. 'I wasn't at work, so the portrait couldn't alert you.'

Said portrait huffed, annoyed, from the corner, but James and Lily both ignored him.

'It's fine, I just — wasn't expecting you. What are you doing here?' Embarrassingly delayed panic suddenly gripped him. 'Has something happened?'

'No, no,' she waved her hand, 'nothing like that. I just wanted a chat.' Lily seemed to falter for a moment before she took a deep breath and brushed a piece of hair behind her ear. 'I — uh. I mean, I can leave if you're busy,' she said, her eyes scanning the stacks of paper across his desk.

'No.' He sounded more vehement than he'd intended and he took a small breath to try and get a handle on himself. 'No, you, uh,' he rose slowly up out of his chair, 'I'm not busy.'

She looked at his desk again and then raised an eyebrow at him. 'You're not?'

'I —' He glanced down at the paper all over his desk. 'Well, I was, but I was getting ready to take a break.'

She frowned. 'Were you actually?'

'Well, I am now, so what does it matter?'

Lily's frown deepened. 'I feel bad.'

James waved his hand as he walked out from behind his desk. 'Don't. I'm glad you're here.' He paused for a beat. 'I'm always glad when you're here.'

Lily apparently didn't have anything to say to that. They just stood across from each other, stock still. Staring.

James swallowed. Took a step forward. 'So what are you really doing here?'

She raised an eyebrow at him, her lips curling, just a bit, into a smile. But it was slightly forced, not at all like the light, easy smiles he was used to. 'I can't've just fancied a chat?'

'I didn't say that. I'm just saying that, this time, I think there's more to it than that.'

Her smile slid slowly off her face. 'What do you think there is to it, exactly?'

He shrugged one shoulder. 'I don't know, that's why I'm asking.'

Lily didn't say anything for a moment and, though James was tempted to fill the silence, to offer to make tea, to say anything else so they weren't just standing there, he was keen to see how long it would take to get her to answer. And, anyway, he'd learnt how to sit and wait people out. If Parliament had taught him one thing, it was that, sometimes, silence was much better than speech.

It was a lesson his mother probably wished he'd learnt decades earlier, but better late than never.

After another beat of silence, Lily looked down at her shoes. James' gaze followed and he watched as she shuffled her feet, scuffing her toe once, twice against the carpet.

'I just —' She planted her foot firmly and James saw her gaze flick up.

He trailed his eyes up over her, his gaze curving over her legs, her waist, her neck, before their eyes caught.

She exhaled hard. 'I missed you.'

James bit the corner of his lip, his eyes flicking to her mouth for a moment before he met her gaze again. 'I missed you, too.'

She took a small, tentative step forward. 'Is that weird? Missing you?'

He shook his head slowly. 'No weirder than my missing you.'

She hummed and took another step forward. 'Okay. Because I feel like it's weird. Possibly.'

Her voice was soft, breathy, and she hadn't ever sounded exactly like this before and she was looking at him with this intensity that he'd never seen, though he'd seen flashes of it, hints, the last time she was standing in his office, when she'd kissed him — nearly kissed him — as she was leaving.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and did his best to keep from shifting his weight nervously. 'Why would that be weird?'

She shrugged one shoulder and, when she stepped forward again, there was only a few feet between them. She watched him realise it, the closeness, and she trailed her eyes slowly over him.

She took a deep breath when their eyes met. 'Is this weird? Right now?'

He didn't need to ask, but he wanted to hear her explain it to him. Wanted to hear the words. 'What's happening right now?'

'I —' She took a breath. Took a step. 'I'm not sure.'

He raised an eyebrow at her. 'You're not?'

She bit the corner of her lip and shook her head. 'I was just thinking about you. I was sitting in my house and, uh —' She feel silent, her eyes on his.

'I was just thinking about you,' she said. 'I've been thinking about you a lot. Actually.'

'Have you?'

She nodded. 'Yeah.'

He hummed, a mildly interested sort of sound that, somehow, didn't betray any of the feelings starting to build in his gut. The want and the need and the ache filling him as he looked at her.

He wanted to ask her what she'd been thinking about — it was right there on the tip of his tongue — but there was something slightly nervous about her expression, an uncertainty, that gave him pause.

He ran his tongue over his lower lip and his eyes flicked, again, down to her mouth.

He took a small step forward. 'I've been thinking about you, too.'

'Really?'

He nodded. 'Also a lot.'

She breathed a laugh, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips. 'Well, I'm glad we're on the same page, then.'

He meant to grin, but the smile came out soft. Easy. Warm. 'Me, too.'

Neither of them moved for a moment. After a beat of silence, Lily took a soft breath.

'So, uh…'

James nodded slowly. 'So.'

She waited, apparently under the impression that he was going to say something else. When he didn't, when he just smiled and stuffed his hands further into his pockets, she frowned at him.

'You aren't going to make this easy on me, are you?'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

She narrowed her eyes at him. 'Bollocks.'

He laughed then, and though she looked mildly annoyed, there was also a brightness to the way she was looking at him now, an energy that hadn't been there before.

'It was hard for me to come here, you know.'

James nodded. 'I'm sure it was.'

She frowned. 'And why's that?'

'You tend to keep things locked up, I think,' he said. He shifted a little closer to her and his arm lifted automatically like he was going to wrap it around her. He caught himself, though, just before, and lowered his arm back to his side. 'I imagine it's difficult, opening up.'

'And what sorts of things do you imagine I came her to open up about?'

He smiled, his eyes bright with a mixture of amusement and anticipation. 'You _missed _me.'

She scoffed, but the light in her eyes was impossible to miss. 'Don't let it go to your head.'

'Oh, it's too late for that, Evans.'

She rolled her eyes. 'I know it is, you big-headed prat.'

He barked a laugh then and her face lit up.

'But there's something else, too,' he said. 'That you're here for.'

She tipped her head to the side, just slightly. 'And what's that?'

He shook his head slowly. 'I want you to tell me.'

And for a moment, she just stood there. Didn't say anything, just held his gaze, and James watched as the slightest bit of color bloomed high on her cheeks, as her eyes, dark, vivid, startlingly green, tipped black.

Her eyes flicked down to his lips again for a long, suspended moment, before she met his gaze again.

'I suppose I fancy you as well.' She said it cheekily, her gaze tipped slightly towards the ceiling, but he knew, when her eyes found his again, that she meant it. That saying it out loud made her unbearably nervous, though, given that he knew his cards were completely on the table, he couldn't imagine what was so nerve-wracking about it.

Still, he couldn't resist messing with her a bit.

He raised an eyebrow at her, his mouth curling into a smile. 'Do you now?'

She nodded, and he thought she might tease him, might call him a prat because she knew that he knew perfectly well, but when she spoke her voice was soft, a little unsure. 'Yeah.'

He stepped forward, his hand moving automatically. He watched her carefully as he moved, studying her as his hand rested lightly on her hip, his fingers curling around her back. He brushed his thumb lightly up her side, just a bit, and Lily stepped even closer, her hands reaching up, tentatively, and resting on his chest.

'I take it you're alright with that, then,' she said. 'Me liking you.'

He nodded and when he spoke, his voice was a bit lower, a bit rougher with anticipation. 'Yeah. I'm definitely alright with it.'

He wasn't sure which one of them moved first — one of her hands slid up his chest and her fingers curled in the hair at the base of his neck and he wrapped his arms around her waist — but the line of tension between them clearly snapped because before he even knew what was happening, Lily was pressed up against him, her mouth on his, and he felt, immediately, like a million tiny fires had been lit under his skin.

He spread his hands out over her back, one hand just brushing up against the ends of her hair, and she groaned against his lips as he pulled her against him so there wasn't a breath of space between them. And — _fuck _— it was amazing how they fit together, how good it felt as she threaded her fingers through his hair, how her body felt underneath his hands. He slid his hands over as much of her as he could reach — her shoulders, lower back, along her sides, over the curve of her hips, and the sides of her breasts — and he tried his best, through the fog in his brain, to memorise the sloping curves of her body because he needed to commit this, commit her, to memory.

He left one hand anchored firmly on her hip as he trailed the fingers of his free hand up her side, his fingers brushing along the side of her breast and catching on her collarbone before he ran his fingertips lightly up the side of her neck. She shivered and moaned softly into his mouth and —

_Fuck, _he nearly came undone.

He traced his thumb along the underside of her jaw and threaded his fingers through her hair. Her hair was soft, so incredibly soft, and then she traced her tongue along his lower lip, so lightly that he almost hadn't felt it at first, and he was — jesus christ, his heart was absolutely going to burst because he could not possibly carry on feeling all these things at once. He couldn't hold all this — this incredible need that was rapidly expanding in his chest and that was, at the same time, starting to reveal the depth of his feelings for her, the feelings that were heavy and solid and _real _—

He couldn't hold this. It was scrambling at the edges of his brain as she kissed him, trying desperately to find a way out of him, and as much as he wanted to just let it all tumble out of him he thought, maybe, that he needed to keep a lid on it, on the insanity of it, for just a little bit longer.

But then she pulled her head back a bit, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright and her breathing heavy, and she looked at him with this look on her face that sent such a thrill through him that he was surprised he didn't pass out from the rush.

'You are really, _really _alright with this, I see.' Her lips hitched up into a teasing smile and James leant down and kissed her again, but lightly, his lips barely there over hers, so there was still just a touch of space between them.

'I like you, Evans.' He kissed the corner of her mouth, the side of her jaw. 'I like you _so much_.'

She sucked in a sharp breath as he kissed the side of her neck and turned her head just slightly. 'Do you?'

He hummed into her skin and pressed a kiss underneath her ear before he lifted up and caught her eye again. Her eyes were dark and she looked a little bit like she was in a haze, and damn if he didn't know the feeling.

'Yeah,' his voice was low and Lily ran her fingers over his shoulders, down his chest, as he spoke. 'I like you so fucking much.'

For an instant, neither of them moved. It was just James, looking at her, trying to communicate just how much he meant those words, and Lily, her eyes on his and her hands playing with the waistband of his trousers and —

He sucked in a breath, they both did, and then her mouth was on his again.

There was a new urgency to this kiss, a heat that he felt right down to his toes, and though he knew that this wasn't going any further tonight — that they weren't, despite what part of him now so desperately wanted, going to go upstairs and fall into his bed — he still let himself tip, just a bit, on the edge of his control.

He ran his hands down her neck, lingered along the sides of her breasts, slid his fingers along the waistband of her trousers and slipped his fingers up underneath her shirt and that first brush of his fingers up underneath her clothes very nearly killed him.

He wasn't even sure how he was standing at this point because there was literally no blood left in his head.

Lily fitted herself more tightly against him and groaned against his lips as their hips pressed together. And she had to know — he'd been trying to keep from pressing himself against her, but she'd gone and done it anyway — just how —

"Turned on" wasn't even enough to describe what he was feeling right now. And he was sure, not that he wanted to be thinking about Sirius right now, that Sirius would say it was because he was a sad, lonely old bachelor who hadn't been with anyone in years, and, alright, that was sort of true (though _years _was maybe a bit of a stretch because it made it sound so much more dramatic than it actually was) but it wasn't — it wasn't _just _that.

Things had been good before — he'd been, uh, _satisfied _— but this was… Lily was….

It had never been like this before. Like he just couldn't get enough of her and he wanted to know every single thing about her — if she had freckles on her shoulders like the ones smattered across her cheeks, what, exactly, would make her gasp, what she'd sound like when he was going down on her — and — just —

He'd never felt like this before. And it felt so fucking cliche to say it, but damn if it wasn't true.

'I — uhm.' She tilted her head back and James moved to press a kiss to the underside of her jaw. 'I should go. We — we probably shouldn't —' He kissed her pulse point and her sentence fell into a moan. 'Fucking hell.'

She wound her fingers through his hair and pulled his mouth back to hers.

The heat was still there, simmering in his chest and sparking between them, but this kiss was lighter now, a soft, gentle slide, and though he thought, maybe, that this was supposed to settle things down, ease them out of this, it wasn't even remotely working like that. Because with each soft pass of her lips against his, he felt the ache in his chest grow again and again until he felt like he couldn't breathe through it. Until she was everywhere — she was every single thought in his head and he could feel her, where her body had been or her hands had traced or where, most noticeably, she'd been absent, against his skin — and it was still soft, light, smooth, but this kiss was absolutely driving him out of his mind.

He pulled away this time, his breath coming in waves, and pressed his forehead to hers. 'Okay. Okay, okay. Just.' He swallowed hard and lifted his forehead from hers and took a step back. 'I just need a second.'

She nodded and James watched her eyes flick down towards his groin. They hovered there for a moment before, cheeks a bit more flushed, she looked back up at him. He had half a mind to sass her as he sat back on the edge of his desk — a raised eyebrow, 'Are you checking me out, Evans?' — but he could barely think through the fog in his brain and he honestly wasn't prepared to handle whatever she might come back with in response to his cheek.

He crossed one arm in front of him to cradle his elbow and pressed his free hand to his forehead, his fingers spreading out and rubbing short lines into his skin. He closed his eyes and took a breath — a deep, intentional breath — and then another.

It wasn't helping much — he still felt a little like he was going to explode and his trousers were now exceedingly uncomfortable — but he felt like, at least, he could act like a normal person for a few more minutes. Like he could say goodnight without draping himself over her again and asking her to stay.

He exhaled hard, opened his eyes, and dropped his hand.

'Okay.' He ran a hand through his hair and half laughed as he lifted his gaze and met her eyes again.

She just watched him as he stood. He thought, for a moment, that she was going to step forward and kiss him again, but she took her own deep breath and gave him a small smile.

'Okay.'

He started across the room, Lily turning on her heel and following him when he reached her. They paused near the coat rack and James lifted her cloak, held it open so that she could step into it.

'I thought about this for days,' she said as he slid the cloak over her shoulders. 'The first time you did this.'

She turned, careful to stay close to him, and looked up at him. 'Maybe that's silly, but —'

He shook his head. 'No. Not silly. I thought about it, too. The way you looked at me as you buttoned it up….'

He held her gaze for a moment, the choice hovering clearly between them, before they both took a deep breath. They laughed softly.

'I haven't felt like this in ages,' Lily said.

He nodded, a smile curving at his lips. 'God, I know. I forgot what this is like.'

She quirked an eyebrow at him. 'What's it like?'

Her eyes tipped just a bit black again and though the temptation was rising in his chest to answer her, he knew that that was, probably, not the best idea. 'I don't think I can describe it to you right now. I'm barely holding onto control as it is.'

Her eyes flicked down to his hips again and James heard her suck in another breath. 'Yeah.' She met his eyes again. 'Yeah, alright.'

His heart beat hard once, twice more against his ribs before he took another breath. 'Can I kiss you goodnight?'

Lily bit the corner of her lip to hide the smile that had just started at the corners of her mouth and she nodded. James stepped forward, his hands lifting automatically so he could run his fingers along her jaw before tangling in her hair, and pressed his lips lightly against hers. And it was a mistake, kissing her again, because the minute his mouth was on hers, it was like the feeling in his chest, the one he was just barely controlling, kicked to life again, and it was stronger, brighter, this time, and now he had electricity singing through him and — _fuck_.

He pulled back, the connection snapping between them, and took a deep breath. Lily opened her eyes and he chuckled.

'I think, maybe,' he was still running his fingers lightly over the back of her neck, 'that was a bad idea.'

Lily nodded jerkily. 'Maybe. But, I'm not regretting it.'

He chuckled and her face lit up in a smile. He leaned down and pressed a soft, chaste kiss to her lips before he dropped his hands and stepped back.

'Alright,' he stuffed his hands into his pockets so he knew he would absolutely keep them to himself. 'Goodnight.'

The smile on her face shifted, became softer, a bit warmer, and James felt his chest glow at the sight. 'Goodnight, James.'

She gave him one last, lingering look before she turned, threw a pinch of powder into the fireplace and, after another quick glance over her shoulder, stepped into the flames.

* * *

**Find me on tumblr! Same username :)**


	8. Chapter 8

**hello friends! welcome back to our regularly scheduled posting... schedule.**

**I hope you enjoy this chapter and I'll see you tomorrow morning with chapter nine!**

* * *

Days afterwards, she still couldn't quite explain it to herself. Why she'd gone to James' on New Years Eve.

Not that she needed to explain it because she was regretting it, because she _definitely_ didn't regret it. She just… maybe thought that they shouldn't've crossed the lines they were barely treading in the first place. That maybe it would have been easier if they'd just kept things professional.

Though there was no point worrying about what they should've done because it was what it was at this point, wasn't it?

God, it really sounded like she was regretting it, but honestly, she wasn't. Not even a little bit.

Nothing, no matter how misguided it might have been, would make her regret kissing James. Nothing in the _world. _Because, yeah, it might make their working relationship a little tenuous and _yeah _their situation might become immensely awkward if things continued to escalate, but she'd kissed him because she'd been thinking about it — consciously or otherwise — since she'd bloody well met him and he had really, _really _kissed her back.

She was pretty sure she could still feel the press of his lips against hers. That it was permanently embedded in her skin, like the most delicious muscle memory.

She thought — again and again and _again _— about going back there over the next fortnight — going back to his office and unbuttoning his shirt and running her hands over his skin and just absolutely having her _way _with him on his desk —

She thought about going back there, but she, somehow, managed to keep just enough of her self control that she got through the next fortnight without showing up in his office in a trenchcoat like she was in some sort of film and completely embarrassing herself.

And, alright, it meant that she mildly obsessed about whether or not it was weird that she wasn't talking to him — what if he thought she was avoiding him because she definitely wasn't avoiding him and she didn't want him to think that — but work was busy, phenomenally busy, and she'd sent him an owl and so….

She'd started worrying the minute she'd sent the owl out the window on Tuesday night that it wasn't enough, but then James sent her back a little note (_this is the weirdest flirting I've ever done :) but I miss you and I hope you have a good week xx James) _and then it was okay after that.

He was busy with last minute referendum preparations anyway — _I keep thinking the 16th is ages away and then I check the calendar and I nearly have a heart attack. As soon as this is over, we should have a night, just us, on the couch _— and she had her own things to be getting on with and so….

It was nice, actually. Being with someone that prioritised work as much as she did. Assuming that she was "with" him.

It was just. It was nice.

He got her. And she didn't feel that pressure she usually felt, like she needed to completely blow off everything that she was working on and hang around with him forever and he didn't feel like he needed to be there constantly to reassure himself that things were working and right and _good _—

He got her.

It was nice.

She was sitting in her office late on the 16th — though, she looked up and checked the clock and realised it was, actually, early on the 17th — and she had half a mind to get up and pop over to James' office. To grab a bottle of champagne, and maybe a bottle of scotch just in case things had gone arse over tit, and start that night on the couch….

Though it was the middle of the night and he was probably sleeping.

He probably wasn't, but he should be sleeping and it probably wasn't wise of her to go over there.

He should be sleeping.

She'd spent the better part of half an hour turning it around in her head and she was just about to get up, to give it up as a bad job and go _home, _when a bright light flooded her office and a Patronus, a small, silver crow, seemed to perch on the end of her desk.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck._

Then the crow opened its mouth and began to speak in Moody's deep, gravely voice and the anxiety in her chest shot almost entirely through the roof.

'We've detected a massive magical disturbance up in the North Sea. I've sent Longbottom and Williamson and instructed them to report to us both directly as soon as they have more information on the situation. I've sent a few other teams around to further areas of interest and I'm calling a few more teams in just in case. I'll follow up with a report as soon as I know more.'

The crow disappeared. Silence filled the office that now seemed strangely dark without the Patronus' bright silver light.

Lily sat, stock still, at her desk and stared.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck. _

True, Moody hadn't said that this was anything she really needed to be overly worried about yet. Yes, there'd been magic, but that wasn't enough evidence on its own to prove that whatever was going on up there was necessarily a bad thing.

It probably was — especially now that she was sat there remembering the reports she'd been getting for the last month or so that had shown that these organisations were starting to retreat further underground and that retreat, from an outsider's perspective, always looked like a positive, but, in practice, it almost always meant a violent resurgence was just on the horizon — but she couldn't sit here getting herself worked up about things that probably were.

She needed facts. She needed details.

Because she was going to have to go tell James and she was not going to go into that meeting half informed.

It was going to be hard enough to tell him as it was. Especially tonight.

She tried not to spiral out on the personal aspects of this whole thing — the fact that she'd damn near snogged the life out of him a few weeks ago, the fact that she was very much looking forward to doing that again, the fact that it probably wasn't going to happen now that things had escalated — because, honestly, those personal pieces didn't matter. They didn't matter.

They weren't important in the grand scheme of things. Sure, this thing between her and James, it — it might've been great, but —

She exhaled hard.

People might've _died _and she was sitting here getting twisted up over the fact that she wasn't able to continue snogging someone.

She spent the next half an hour doing everything that she could to distract herself. She sent an owl to Remus to clue him in on what may or may not be going on, she pulled every report she could find and started building something that, in the worst case scenario, could serve as some sort of timeline. She tracked movements, arrests, raids, she started pulling together bits they'd pulled from suspect statements and trying to, somehow, connect them to the timeline or the map or, if they didn't fit in anywhere, trying to figure out how, in the future, they might be relevant because things almost always became relevant, even if you struggled to figure out how at the time.

Remus showed up at nearly half one and found her writing furiously on a massive board she'd conjured and brewed them both a bit of tea.

This was where she was comfortable, this planning. And she was glad that Remus didn't try to sit her down, to get her to relax, because she needed to be doing this just then. She needed to have her hands in the evidence and to start sifting through it to find a way that made it all make sense and she needed to feel like she understood it. She needed to have some kind of control over the information, at least, because she couldn't control the situation and the information gave her something of a way in.

They'd been sitting there for a while, mugs of tea now slowly cooling on Lily's desk, Remus silently watching Lily flit back and forth between her large, spread-out pile of papers and the board she was slowly assembling them on, when another Patronus floated into Lily's office and everything went still.

The Basset hound spoke in Frank's soft, quick tenor and, as his words floated out into her office, Lily tried her best to remain standing.

'Minister — an oil platform in the North Sea exploded and we have every reason to believe, based on the magical traces we've detected, that it was magically done. Dozens of people have died, dozens more have been sent to hospital with fairly severe burns and other injuries, so I expect the death toll to climb. We've put the fire out and magically stabilised the structure and Williamson and I are working on recovering more bodies from the sea with the Muggle rescue teams. We have no reason to believe that they think us out of the ordinary, but we'll carry out protocol as needed.

'I expect to be here through the night and I've asked Moody to send us at least two additional Auror teams. He's working on sending those now. If you need any additional information, feel free to reach back to me — I'll be here or in Aberdeen all day.'

The Patronus faded away and Lily let her eyes fall closed for one moment. Just one, tiny moment. Then she pulled in a slow, even breath, and opened her eyes.

Remus was looking at her, an expression on his face she'd never seen before.

'What do we do?' He sounded mildly terrified and Lily couldn't even remotely blame him. She had a very similar feeling swirling around in her own chest.

Lily exhaled hard and stepped back to her desk. She dropped the marker she'd been using to write on her board, grabbed her tea, and took a long drag. When she lowered the mug back down to the table, her hands were shaking a bit.

'I'm going to tell the Prime Minister.' She smoothed her hands along the sides of her legs to stop them shaking. 'If you could contact Amelia Bones and get her in, contact Moody and see if he needs anything, get Arthur in here… rally everyone you think we need. I want to get this investigation going while it's fresh.'

She took another deep breath and, this time, she straightened her spine and tipped her head up just a bit. 'I want to get these people and we've got maybe a few hours to get the best information we can.'

Remus nodded once and, only pausing to grab his tea off Lily's desk, strode quickly out of her office.

When the door fell shut behind Remus a moment later, Lily looked down at the carpet and took another deep breath. There were so many things jockeying for position in her mind — what would she tell James? How would she present it? What did Moody need and how quickly could she get it to him? Should she just go up to Aberdeen her fucking self and help? She had the training and the experience and she could be useful and —

There were too many things to focus on, too many things that needed her attention, and so she took one last deep, full breath and focused.

She'd tell James everything, obviously. Everything she knew, which, granted, wasn't much as this stage, but she needed to get to him sooner rather than later because it was only going to be a matter of time before he was alerted by someone in his own government.

Muggle communication was certainly a lot faster than it had been when she'd first been coming up.

Lily grabbed her mug off her desk and drained the contents, setting the mug onto the mantlepiece beside the pot of Floo Powder. She looked towards the small portrait of the wizard in the corner as she grabbed a pinch of Powder out.

'Ethelred? Can you let him know I'm on my way?'

The silver-haired wizard nodded once and disappeared, and Lily bounced restlessly on her heels as she waited for him to return. She had half a mind to just throw the Floo Powder in and go before Ethelred returned, but she knew, with her luck this evening, that she'd do that and find herself stepping into the middle of some sort of informal cabinet meeting and then she'd have to either Obliviate an entire room full of top-government officials or she'd have to figure out how to bring this back to the Wizengamot (and, probably, the International Confederation of Wizards) in a way that wasn't so grossly offensive that she ended up in Azkaban.

She had quite enough to be getting on with at the moment without adding a Statute of Secrecy violation into the mix.

Ethelred slid back into his portrait a moment later, an absolutely foolish smile on his face. 'He seems quite excited about your visit, ma'am.'

Lily held her fingers up at him, but that, of course, just made him snort with laughter. She frowned at him as she pitched her Floo Powder into the fire and her face turned vivid green in the glow from the flames. 'Oh, stuff it, Ethelred.'

James was standing just a few feet from the fireplace when she popped up behind the grate a moment later. He was smiling so brightly, that warm, silly smile that she loved so much, but there must have been something in her expression because he took one look at her as she stepped out of the fire and his expression darkened.

'What's happened?'

'I —' A loud ringing punctuated the air and Lily broke off. James shot her an apologetic look.

'Sorry, that's my mobile, I'll just shut it off —'

'No,' she shook her head. 'Answer it.'

James looked like he wanted to press her, but then the phone rang again and he pulled it out of his pocket. He tapped the screen once and pressed it to his ear.

'This is James…. No, no, don't — okay….' The expression on James' face shifted and his eyes flicked to Lily's. 'Are there any casualties? Fucking hell, that's — right, okay…. What hospital? Okay — no, yeah, I'll — Margot will rework my schedule for tomorrow, I'll be there… I don't want you to give anymore interviews tonight…. Yeah, no, shut it down until we can at least _start _the investigation…. You — Dalton, you don't _have _to agree, I'm telling you — Thank you…. Goodnight.'

James pressed the screen of his mobile again and tossed to phone onto a pile of papers on his desk. She thought he might speak immediately, but he let his eyes fall closed for a second and he took a deep, steadying breath. When he opened his eyes and looked at her, he looked a bit more composed than he had a second before, but she could also see, just as clearly, the emotions roiling under the surface.

'Please tell me you aren't here about the oil platform.'

Lily couldn't think of anything to say to that because there was nothing, _nothing, _in her head that prepared her for the look on his face. Her silence, though, was apparently all James needed in the way of an answer. He swore and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose, his eyes falling closed again.

She waited for a moment, a breath, before she exhaled and started speaking.

'I received a report from the Auror Office an hour ago —'

James' hand dropped as his eyes shot open. '_An hour? _You've known about this for an _hour _and you didn't fucking tell me!?'

'— that there was evidence of a magical disturbance in the North Sea. We weren't quite sure, yet, what it was, but we sent a team of Aurors up to investigate and sent a number of other teams around to the locations we know to be hotbeds of one sort or another.' She looked up at him and, though she left a beat of silence, James didn't interrupt her again.

'I had a report just before I came here from one of the Aurors at the North Sea. It's too early to tell what _exactly _happened, but we have some guesses that I think will be supported by the evidence when it eventually comes through.'

'And what are those?'

Lily took a deep breath. 'We have reason to believe that the oil platform was destroyed by this group of wizards that we've been tracking. If not hit outright, it was, at least, ensured that some of the platform's key components would fail in order to bring on the explosion. We aren't sure which of those is more accurate, but, if I had to guess, I would say that the platform was destroyed outright.'

Lily paused but James just nodded.

'The platform has been magically stabilised, for the moment, and the Aurors are involved in the search and rescue efforts —'

'What? How? Won't people see them?'

'They're very good at concealing magic and, no offense, Muggles are very good at not seeing it.'

James hummed and Lily waited for him to say something, but he stayed silent.

After a beat, she cleared her throat. 'Remus is currently calling in our new Head of Magical Law Enforcement, Amelia Bones —'

James' brow creased. 'Is she any good? Better than that bloke you hated?'

Lily felt the corner of her mouth twitch like she was going to smile, but she caught it just in time. She nodded. 'Amelia's brilliant. She's a year or two younger than I am, but we came up right around the same time. She worked on the legal side of things — she wasn't ever interested in getting out in the field and doing the dirty work — but she's incredibly fair and is, honestly, a little relentless when it comes to obtaining justice. So far she's been a dream to work with.'

'How so?'

'Well, put it this way — our first meeting, she walked into my office with a stack of files that turned out to be case files on all those hearings Crouch had dismissed over the last few years. She'd marked every single one up with notes about how she would have handled the cases differently and, in a few cases, marked files where she thought people could be brought back in for other offenses. We've been steadily making arrests since she joined as Head and she sees to it that each and every one of them has had a fair trial.'

James hummed. 'That's reassuring.'

Lily nodded. 'It's slow work, that piece of it, but I trust Amelia to do it. Anyway, Remus is bringing her in, Alastor Moody, the Head of our Auror Office, Arthur Weasley, the Head of our Muggle Liaison Office…. I'm going to head back shortly and meet with them to —'

'I want to meet with them.'

It was like Lily's brain had short-circuited. 'Wh — What?'

'I want to meet with them,' James said again. His expression was completely even, his tone flat, but she was sure that there was some kind of emotion simmering under the surface.

Trouble was, she wasn't sure what that emotion was — if it was anger or anxiety or _what_ — and that was certainly going to throw a wrench into things.

Lily shook her head. 'You can't. We're meeting in the Ministry and —'

James crossed his arms and when he spoke, his tone was hard. 'I think I have a right to be in on these meetings, Lily.'

Ah. So it was anger, then.

'I'm not saying you don't,' she said. 'I'm just saying that tonight isn't the time.'

'A fucking oil platform just exploded! Dozens of people are dead! Dozens more are injured and it's all because some fucking wizards decided to blow it up! Just to do it. If _tonight _isn't the time, then when?'

Lily took a slow, steadying breath and just resisted the urge to snap back at him. 'When we've had time to prepare everyone on my side, to let them know you're coming and —'

James shook his head vehemently. 'Everyone doesn't need to be prepared. They just need to deal with it when it comes.'

Lily finally felt some of her control start to slip. 'I don't want them _dealing with it. _I need them to be at top form! I need everyone back in my office, every single one of them, to be ready to hit the ground running with this.'

'And they can't do that if I'm there? I'm too much of a distraction?'

'It's not —' She sighed heavily and tried her best to let her own irritation (and her own anxiety about, now, being late back to the Ministry) flood out of her. It wasn't going to get either of them anywhere if they were both worked up and she knew that he wasn't going to like the fact that she wasn't changing her mind, but she needed him to, at least, accept it. For now.

'James, it's not that.'

James threw up his hands. 'Then what is it?! What is so damn important that means I can't participate in the process intended to investigate people who just murdered dozens of people I'm responsible for protecting?'

'We're not trying to actively exclude you —'

'It certainly seems that way.'

Lily shook her head and barely suppressed an eyeroll. 'For fucks sake. James, _I _am your contact. I bring you reports about what's been going on. And I think you're right,' she raised her voice because James opened his mouth and looked like he had every intention of jumping in again, 'that you should be in on these meetings. I do think it's important, especially moving forward, that we have a better relationship with you and your government and that means that you have to meet some of my Department Heads and the people I rely on. But, all that said, you _cannot_ come with me tonight.'

James just stared at her, his expression hard. She waited, a minute, maybe two, in silence, but James was still just staring at her. He was clearly turning over something in his head, but, whatever it was, he wasn't feeling open to sharing at the moment. He still had a mildly mutinous look about him, though, and she was desperate to quell that.

'James,' her tone was softer, more imploring than before, 'you can't just _not_ be here.'

He scoffed. 'Of course I can —'

'No,' she shook her head. 'No, you can't. You think it'll go well if your Ministers or security or whoever turn up looking for you or try to contact you and you're nowhere to be found? You think that that will end well?'

'I — _fuck_, Lily.' He reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose and was quiet again for a moment. When he dropped his hand and looked up at her, he looked exhausted.

And she knew she'd won.

The flood of conflicting feelings she felt at that wasn't as surprising as it might have been, but she was still mildly shocked at how strong her inclination was to just stay here with him tonight. To support him through this.

'Alright.' He waved his hand. 'Go, then. But I want a meeting on the books and I want it ASAP.'

Lily nodded. 'I'll schedule it this evening. What night works for you?'

James half shrugged, shook his head, looked down at the floor. 'Any. I don't care.'

Lily nodded again, more slowly this time. 'Alright.'

She knew she should turn, knew she should walk away, but she was hesitating. She was poised on the brink, could feel the tension in her muscles, but she wasn't sure what she was hesitating about.

She had things to be doing. Things that were massive, important, things that couldn't wait, and yet here she was.

She'd had to come here to explain things to him, obviously, but she knew that this was more than that.

Because watching him deal with this was harder than she'd realised it would be. She'd seen him deal with difficult things, had been here after he'd had a particularly hard day in the Commons or someone had been a twat in the papers or he'd just had a million things to get done and only a few hours to get through them — she'd seen him annoyed and frustrated and overwhelmed, and this was all those things but with a very distinct thread of helplessness that nearly shattered Lily's resolve.

She'd heard it in his voice as he'd been shouting, the lost, out of control sort of feeling, and she hated playing a further role in making him feel powerless. Making him feel like there was nothing he could do to protect the people he'd sworn to work for.

And, sure, there weren't a lot of things that he could do, not right now, but —

She just didn't want him feeling this way.

And she knew she couldn't make it better, but maybe she could….

She sighed heavily and James looked up at the sound. He didn't say anything, just watched as she stepped forward — the first step tentative, the next few sure — and reached out to take his hand. She squeezed his hand, ran her thumb across his knuckles, and when she looked up at him, he was watching her with an almost hesitant look on his face.

'It'll be okay, James. I swear to you, it will.'

A million things flitted across his face then — disbelief, anxiety, hope, frustration, she couldn't quite catch them all — but, instead of saying anything, James just nodded slowly and, eyes on hers, brushed his thumb along the inside of her wrist.

And it was entirely inappropriate, the tug in her gut just then, but it was also nearly overwhelming.

Lily squeezed his hand once more before she let go. She watched as it slowly lowered back to his side and then she turned on her heel and strode across the office towards the fire.

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	9. Chapter 9

**I'll see you lot next week with more chapters! I hope you have a lovely week xx**

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It was surprisingly loud outside her door when Lily stepped back into her office a moment later. She couldn't tell where, exactly, the voices were coming from — if everyone was just outside her door in the waiting area or if they were in the conference room just across the hall — but she was grateful that Remus hadn't had everyone waiting in her office for when she returned.

Lily pulled her wand out of the inside pocket of her jacket and waved it lightly, stepping out of the way just as the kettle zoomed across the room into the fire. She stepped across the room and, after preparing five mugs and setting them onto her infrequently-used tea tray, she pressed her hands into the windowsill, letting her head fall forward between her arms.

She took one breath. Two.

The sound of the kettle just starting to boil grew louder and the voices from outside slowly faded into the background.

She felt guilty even allowing herself this moment of weakness. For letting herself, even temporarily, fold against the weight of the night's events. And she knew she was entitled to bouts of feeling, that she was allowed, like anyone, a moment to gather herself, to get centred, to find her footing — she knew, mostly because Remus was always fucking telling her, but it still went against everything she knew. Everything she'd been training in herself since — well, fuck, since she was fifteen at least.

She was tempted to say eleven, but she hadn't really — she hadn't known the scope of it all then. She'd only had to deal with Petunia and her feelings about who she was and Lily had hardened herself against that in a different way.

It was similar, she supposed. But it felt different in practice.

But guilty or not, this moment — she needed this moment. Because she knew that she was going to pick up her head, knew that she was going to walk out of this office, back straight, firmly determined, and she wasn't going to cave. She allowed herself this moment, despite the guilt, because she knew herself well enough to know that nothing, _nothing, _would change the reality of what she was about to do.

It was probably obnoxious, the level of trust she placed in herself, but it had been critical to her growing up and, after twenty-five fucking years of carrying on this way, she'd learnt never to question it.

The kettle began softly whistling from the fire and Lily took one last deep breath before she straightened and turned around. She waved her wand to pour hot water into the mugs she'd prepared, and, after setting the milk, sugar, and a handful of spoons onto the tray, she straightened her spine, walked across the office, and opened her door.

When she stepped out into the reception area and realised that all that noise was, indeed, coming from the conference room down the hall, Lily was doubly glad that Remus had thought to corral everyone in another space.

She wouldn't have been able to handle that much noise the minute she got back to her office.

She strode quickly across the corridor, her heels' clacking against the floor barely registering over the noise. And then she pushed open the conference room door with her hip and the room almost immediately fell silent.

'Minister.' Remus hopped up immediately to lift the tea tray out of her hands.

And while normally she would have fought him on it — and normally, "Minister" would have been delivered with barely disguised cheek — neither of them had the energy at the moment.

Nor was it entirely appropriate.

Lily and Remus passed out mugs in silence, each person accepting them with a quiet, 'Thanks.' Lily sloshed a bit of milk into her own — frowning at the colour — before she pulled out the chair next to Remus' and settled into her seat.

She took a tentative sip of her tea — it definitely wasn't strong enough — before she looked around at the rest of the table.

'Thank you all for coming in in the middle of the night. I know that this isn't where any of you want to be at the moment.'

A few people murmured things Lily couldn't quite catch — "Of course" or "No problem" or some combination — and Lily took another deep breath before she straightened and folded her hands neatly on the table.

'I've just informed the Muggle Prime Minister of the night's events. He actually received a call from one of his officials while I was there and, apparently, there are reporters in Aberdeen now, so it's safe to say that, come morning, everyone in the country will be aware of what's happened.

'I've asked you all here tonight because I want to do what we can to get out ahead of this. I want to hear your ideas for how we move forward. And I think that it has to be a far-reaching plan — we have to think more — "holistically" is the wrong word here, but I think it gets at what I mean — about how we can address these issues. There's been some cooperation, especially between Muggle Liaison and the Auror Office,' she tipped her head towards Arthur and Moody respectively, 'and the Head's Office is working to restore those bridges that have long been neglected,' she nodded her thanks to Amelia, 'but we need a much more comprehensive approach.

'And I know that our options are somewhat limited because of the Statute of Secrecy,' Lily noticed Amelia sit up just a bit straighter out of the corner of her eye, 'but one of the things I want to talk about tonight it what you think we _can _do. But I'd appreciate an update first, if there's one to be had.' She looked towards Moody, who nodded.

'Last I heard, Longbottom and Williamson had recovered a few more bodies, bringing the death toll to 37. They expect that number to rise as Search and Rescue continues their work. The structure was stabilised and those charms appear to be holding, so we aren't in immediate danger of a collapse. We're hoping that leaves plenty of time for the rescue teams to move in and around the platform to recover everyone that is currently MIA.

'I've sent a half dozen other teams to spots around the country where we've seen increased activity over the last few months. I don't necessarily expect them to find anything, but I told them that I wanted them to have their ears to the ground and to be ready to make arrests if necessary. So far, I've only heard back from the first of those teams — Knowles and Conrad. Apparently things are suspiciously quiet in Northampton.'

Lily nodded and, picking up her mug again, tasted her tea. She grabbed her spoon and fished out the tea bag while Moody carried on talking.

'We've got a meeting set for everyone tomorrow morning, 9am sharp. I'm going to set up a task force and I'm ask for weekly reports that will be sent directly up to your office, Minister. I'm not sure — to the point you were making earlier — I have an even more far-reaching approach than this, but I'm open to suggestions if you have them.'

'No, no, I think that's great, Moody,' Lily took another sip of her tea and exhaled slowly as the warmth flooded through her. 'It'll be the sort of thing that we need to reevaluate as time passes — make sure that there isn't more that we could be doing, make sure that the things we are doing are working for us, et cetera — but I think that this sounds like a strong start.

'But, okay, while we're on that topic — Arthur and Amelia, I'm mostly directing this at you, though, Moody, if you have questions or thoughts, obviously don't hesitate to jump in. What, based on your experience in your offices, do you think we could improve? I'm thinking in terms of the things we roll out in the magical community, but also our relationship with Muggles more generally? What have you seen, what are the common practices, and what do you think an ideal situation would look like?'

Arthur and Amelia glanced at each other and Amelia gestured in front of her. 'Go ahead.'

Arthur frowned. 'You sure?'

Amelia nodded. 'Of course.'

Arthur held her gaze for a moment longer before he took a deep breath and turned towards Lily.

'I'll say that I think the attention you've paid to the Muggle community since you came into office has been, overall, beneficial. Our office has seen a marked increase in the number of students taking Muggle Studies though O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. level, for example, and, overall, the climate _has_ shifted when it comes to general attitudes. It's hard to get a measure on those sorts of things, but the data that we do have suggests that there is, overall, more acceptance.

'But that's led,' Arthur sighed and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, 'to a fairly sizeable backlash that we predicted, but we obviously didn't predict to this scale. And part of that, I think, it to be blamed on the fact that some of those older prejudices — the assertion that Muggleborn students are going to be less talented than pureblood students, for example — we allowed to continue mostly unchecked. We don't see much of those sorts of attitudes among most in the younger generation, so there's been progress, but many of the people that were around in the late eighties and nineties still hold onto these belief systems, even if they aren't using them intentionally to create harm.

'I don't think I have enough evidence yet to make any firm declarations one way or the other about what's causing this most recent upswing — from my standpoint anyway — but my sense, honestly, is that this might have grown out of the work that we've been doing over the last decade. That people got,' Arthur looked to the ceiling as he tried to decide what to say. 'Frustrated, maybe. That doesn't mean I think we shouldn't have done it,' Arthur clarified. 'It just means that I wish I'd thought about this possibility a bit more at the time.'

'I don't know how we could have prevented it, though,' Lily said. 'There's no way to move forward without upsetting the people that are quite happy with the way things have been.'

Arthur nodded slowly. 'I suppose that's true.'

'But, okay, so other than going back and starting again with the knowledge that this could be a potential outcome, what, from your perspective, do you think we could improve on? How can we get out ahead of this?'

'See, that's the thing,' Arthur said. 'There's always room for improvement, right, but I really do think that what these people are reacting against — they're not at all typical of the norm, these folks. They're outliers who have taken small, isolated points of view and are weaponising them. And I don't know how we address that,' he looked towards Amelia and Moody, 'but from an educational perspective, because that's where I stand on most of this, I don't think we could have rolled things out differently.'

Arthur was quiet for a moment as he considered what he wanted to say next. 'I do think, though, that the area we could most improve upon is our relationship with the Muggle community itself. We obviously haven't done everything that we can do where the magical community is concerned — we clearly have to have some sort of… reckoning with ourselves and the way we do things, especially because we are still so far behind in a lot of ways. And we're working on that in my office — the technology bit alone is a full-time job — but sometimes I think that we're trying to work on something from only one side. And I know that there are limitations to how much we can really work with the Muggles, but —'

Arthur fell quiet again as he looked up at the ceiling and tried to decide just how to word what he wanted to say.

'I know that there are limitations to the things we could do,' he said at last, 'and I don't quite know what this would even look like yet, working more closely with Muggles, but I do think that there's something to be gained here.'

No one said anything for a moment. Lily, honestly, was inclined to agree with him — and she tried not to think that it was only because of her newly developing feelings that she found herself thinking that, yes, this might be an absolutely smashing idea — but, like Arthur, she wasn't sure what this would look like in practice.

She didn't know how, with the Statute of Secrecy, they'd manage the connection that Arthur was talking about. And while Lily didn't necessarily have qualms about violating the law when she thought that it was outdated or unjust or harmful, there was a lot at stake here. And to push around that law would involve, necessarily, the outing, essentially, of people across the UK and, maybe, around the world. People who might not be ready for that. People who might not _want_ that.

Maybe they could have some sort of vote, but then she remembered the vote that James was currently dealing with the ramifications of and, sure, James had probably salvaged things — she hadn't asked earlier — but she didn't really want to push things to the brink without some sense that she'd be able to pull it back safely from the edge.

There were times to go into situations without a sense of how things would end — this was not one of those times.

But this was something she needed to spiral out about on her own time.

She lifted her mug and took another quick sip of her tea. 'Well, that actually brings us to something that I wanted to ask about.' Everyone at the table turned to look at her and she took a subtle deep breath.

'The Prime Minister is interested in being in on these meetings moving forward. Now, whether that means he comes to the Ministry or we go to him, I think that's up for discussion. But he was adamant, and I think he's right, that he be included in these conversations because he has a very real stake in them.'

She looked around the table — Arthur nodded when she caught his eye, an excited expression lighting his features, but Amelia and Moody were both wearing visibly sceptical expressions. She tilted her head towards them. 'What do you both think?'

Amelia and Moody looked at each other for a moment before Moody waved his hand lightly towards her to indicate that Amelia should go first. Amelia cleared her throat.

'I can see _why _he'd want to participate in these conversations, but I'm just not sure, logistically, how it would work. And I'm hesitant to set a precedent that we might not be able to maintain with future Prime Ministers.'

Lily hummed, picked up her mug, and drained the rest of her tea.

'If we decided to move forward, though,' Amelia continued, 'we'd have to hold the meetings at the Prime Minister's office. It touches a little too close to the Statute if we bring him to the Ministry.'

Lily nodded as she leant back in her seat. 'So you're of the mind that we shouldn't include him, but if we do —'

'It can't be here, yes. And the access he's given must necessarily be limited.'

Lily frowned. 'In what way?'

'I don't think that he should be present when we're talking about larger governmental procedures that don't directly affect him or his government.'

'Well, I don't know that we'd necessarily come round to those issues in these meetings. And, to be frank, I think if it's brought up in the context of the things we're talking about, than it must be at least tangentially related.'

Amelia tipped her head from side to side noncommittally and Lily was struck, again, by just how different she was from Crouch. Where Crouch would have already been passive aggressively sniping back at her, Amelia was quietly considering what Lily'd said and thinking through the implications.

'What I want to know,' Moody said, leaning forward and resting his forearms on the table, 'is what he expects to contribute. How does he see his participation helping these investigations that, to date, have always been handled outside the scope of the Muggle government?'

'Right,' Amelia nodded towards Moody. 'He won't have the precedent nor the resources. If anything, he'd be a hindrance.'

'I'm not necessarily saying he'd be a hindrance,' Moody said. 'But I am saying that I don't have time to catch him up. If we want to be moving on this, we cannot, absolutely cannot, pause.'

'No, I agree,' Lily said. 'I don't want to lose anyone that might be useful to us because we're dicking around with administrative things. I told the Prime Minister as much this evening. But I do think it's important that he's included, especially because he has the interest and, based on what I know about him, the capability.'

Lily saw Remus look at her out of the corner of her eye with some kind of expression on his face, but she didn't turn to meet with gaze.

'But so, okay, we're alright with having him in these meetings? Because I'm going to write to him tonight and catch him up.' She turned her gaze on everyone at the table in turn and watched as they looked between one another before they met her eyes.

'Yes,' Amelia said, as Arthur and Moody nodded. 'I think we're alright with that.'

Lily nodded. 'Great.'

'While we're on the subject of the Prime Minister, though,' Moody said, 'I think that we need to start having a serious conversation about his protection in particular.'

A chill shot through Lily's chest at those words and she hoped, desperately, that it hadn't shown on her face.

'Have there been threats?'

Moody shook his head and the tightness in Lily's chest relaxed slightly. 'Not significant ones, no. Nothing credible. But it's only a matter of time and I know that their government is already is some sort of turmoil and the last thing they need is to have the Prime Minister assassinated in the middle of it.'

Lily normally appreciated Moody's gruff honesty, but right now it was honestly going to kill her.

She swallowed against the hard lump in her throat. 'So what do you suggest?'

'Shacklebolt,' Moody said firmly. He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms. 'We'll station Shacklebolt in his office as staff. I'm sure he'll be bored as hell, but —'

'No,' Lily shook her head. 'That's a good idea. And Kingsley is perfect because he's not going to slack off just because he's bored like _some _people might.'

Lily didn't clarify, but she didn't need to. Moody nodded. 'Exactly.'

Lily tipped her head at him. 'Perfect. I'll clear it with Potter first, but I can't imagine that he'll have a problem with it.'

Everyone was quiet for a moment and Lily, sensing that everyone, at this point, was too exhausted to carry on, decided that this particular meeting needed to be cut short.

They had people investigating. They'd get reports in the morning. Carrying on sitting in this office and batting ideas back and forth — none of which could be supported by the most up-to-date information because they hadn't had it from the Auror teams yet — wasn't going to do any of them any good.

She felt a little guilty thinking about going to bed when she knew that they had just tasked over a dozen people with working through the night, but she'd worked through more than enough nights to make up her share.

Maybe.

'Alright,' Lily grabbed her mug and intended to take another drink before she realised it was empty. She set it back down, a disappointed frown on her face. 'Let's do a quick action plan and then we can get out of here. Next forty-eight hours, what's the plan?' She turned to look towards Arthur who cleared his throat.

'I'll be pulling all the reports from the last few months to see if we can start to catch any patterns that we might have missed. We'll work on that in conjunction with the Auror Office, if that's alright, Moody?' Moody nodded and Arthur tipped his head in thanks. 'Otherwise, I'll start looking into the feasibility of some of these more… hands on plans that we were talking about earlier. I'll probably reach out to your office, Amelia,' Arthur said, looking at her, 'but I'll aim to have some solid ideas that I can bring to our regularly scheduled meeting next week, Minister.'

Lily nodded and turned to Moody. He cleared his throat gruffly.

'I'll follow up with the Aurors this evening and allocate any additional resources as necessary. We're going to go for the full push over the next thirty-six hours to see if we can't rustle some people out of the hedges, so I'll have to follow up with you and let you know what we find.'

Lily nodded. 'And if you need anything — additional money, human power, anything — you let me know. I'll join you myself if you need me to.'

Moody breathed a laugh and shook his head at her ever so slightly. 'Still an Auror down to your bones, aren't you, Minister?'

Lily nodded her head. 'You know I am. But, okay, Amelia. What's the plan?'

Amelia sat up a bit in her chair, a feat because, from Lily's perspective, she was already sat ramrod straight. 'I'll be following up with some people in my office about the legality of some of the things we talked about today — Arthur's proposals being central in my mind at the moment, but I'll also have some of my staff go back through the arrest records and see if we can't pull anything else that was elevated to the Department Level and dropped, see if I can't give Moody's folks something to follow up on. I know we pulled a few dozen over the last few weeks, but if this has been brewing for a while, it's possible there were more that we missed that first go round.'

Moody tipped his head at her in thanks and Amelia nodded once.

'Otherwise, I'm going to be looking into our protocols and procedures while I wait for the Aurors to start turning people around for prosecution. And, Moody, if you need any resources from my office, of course don't hesitate to reach out.'

Moody nodded. 'Thank you.'

Amelia inclined her head.

'Okay, so,' Lily clasped her hands together on the table in front of her. 'Is there anything else before we go?' Lily scanned the room but no one offered anything up. She unfolded her hands and tapped the top of the table with her knuckles. 'Great. We'll meet again next week, hopefully in the Prime Minister's office. I'll have Sophie reach out with details as soon as we have them.'

Lily stood slowly as most everyone else set their empty mugs back on the tray and then slid quickly out of the room, the sound of their shoes tapping against the tile the only sound as they strode down the corridor. Lily picked up the tea tray and smiled up at Remus as they started across the room towards the corridor.

'How'd that go, then?'

Remus sighed heavily. 'About as well as it could've done, I expect.'

Lily nodded. 'Yeah.'

They were quiet as they stepped out into the corridor and Lily paused as Remus turned to pull the door shut behind them.

'God, I can't wait to get home and get into bed.' Remus said. He tucked his papers up against his side as he and Lily turned and started across the corridor towards the reception area outside her office.

Lily nodded. 'God, I know. Even if it weren't,' she turned her wrist carefully to check her watch, 'two in the morning, I'd be exhausted from just the stress of it all.'

'Right? But you headed out now? We can go together.'

'No, I'm going to leave in a few minutes. I've just got one more thing to finish.'

Remus raised an eyebrow at her. 'Lily —'

'Honestly, Remus. Just one thing. I'll be home and in bed in under ten minutes.'

Remus studied her for a moment before he finally sighed. 'Fine. But I swear, if I come in and find you sleeping on your desk again —'

'You will murder me with your bare hands,' Lily said, smiling at him. 'Got it.'

Remus smiled in spite of himself as he shook his head at her. 'You know I will.'

Lily grinned. 'I know better than to underestimate you, love.'

'Good.'

Lily reached out and tapped Remus lightly on the elbow. 'Hey, how's Philip, by the way? You haven't mentioned him in a while.'

Remus sighed heavily and shrugged one shoulder in a would-be casual way. 'I don't know. We sort of fizzled out a few weeks ago.'

Lily's eyebrows shot up. 'Really? You never said.'

Remus shifted the papers he was holding and hugged them to his chest. 'We've been busy. And it really didn't matter. We weren't serious anyway.'

'Yeah, but still! I'm sorry.'

Remus shook his head. 'Don't be. He turned out to be a bit of a twat, actually. In the end.'

Lily waited a moment for Remus to elaborate, but he didn't say anything else. She frowned. 'Still. I'm sorry.'

'Honestly, it's fine. I'm much better off. And hey,' he smiled. 'Now I get to live that single life. You know how much I love that.'

Lily snorted. 'Oh, yes. You're a regular Don Juan.'

Remus' smile widened. 'Exactly. So, see, I'll be alright.'

'No, I know you will be. I just —' she paused for a moment before she shook her head and smiled. 'If you need a wingman, you let me know.'

Remus barked a laugh. 'Yeah, Lil. I'll owl ya.'

Lily held her fingers up at him. 'Go home.'

Remus smiled. 'Yeah, alright. I'll see you tomorrow.'

Lily watched Remus start off down the corridor before she turned on her heel and walked back into her office. She shut the door behind her and there was something so — "final" wasn't right because this wasn't over, not by a long shot, but it was like she was finally finished for the day.

Like the weight pressing on her chest finally lifted just enough that she could breathe.

She took a deep, shaky breath and, after adjusting the tray in her hands so she could hastily wipe her cheeks, she shook her head quickly to clear it. She sucked in another sharp breath before she straightened her shoulders a bit and crossed the office.

She didn't, technically, have to do this part here — she couldn't even post the letter from here anyway because Circe, her owl, was at home (and, really, couldn't even come to the office with her because Lily didn't have a bloody window and Circe hated just sitting inside all day) — but she just —

She didn't want to bring this home with her. Didn't know if she could be in the right mind at home. If she was sitting at her kitchen table, relaxed and vulnerable and —

She wouldn't be in the right headspace.

So, instead of going home and getting the rest that, at this point, she _desperately _needed, Lily sat down behind her desk and grabbed a blank sheet of paper and a pen. She looked down at the paper for a moment before she took a deep breath and started writing.

_Prime Minister —_

_I spoke with the Department Heads working with me on these recent developments, and we've agreed that you should be present for our meetings moving forward. These will have to be held at your office as there are concerns from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement (DMLE) that meetings in the Ministry would violate the International Statute of Secrecy. We are also unable to meet at a third party location due to security concerns cited by both DMLE and the Auror Office. The committee has decided to meet in person on a weekly basis and the first of such meetings would occur next week. My suggestion is that we replace our standing Friday meeting with this one. Please let me know by return owl if this is agreeable to you. _

_On a separate, but related, note, the Auror Office and DMLE have also expressed interest in increasing your level of security. While there are no current, credible threats to your safety, we're eager to forestall any that might arise. Kingsley Shaklebolt is a highly trained Auror we would like to place in your employ for such purpose. Unless you have objections, we'll move forward with this placement immediately. _

_Thank you, Prime Minister, for your time and attention this evening. I await your return owl and I'll see you next week. _

_Lily Evans_

_Minister for Magic_

She stared down at the paper for a second before she leant back in her chair and read through what she'd written. It didn't read any differently from most of the other things she usually wrote, but there was just something about it that wasn't sitting right with her.

It was stiff. Impersonal.

And she didn't know why that mattered — she was writing this about work, for god's sake — but still.

It bothered her.

So before she could talk herself out of it, Lily grabbed her pen and scribbled a note at the bottom —

_I know that this was an impossible night — I wish that there was something I could do to make it better. I know that you won't, but please, __please_ _try to get some sleep tonight. I'll owl you tomorrow to check in._

She skimmed over the letter again — and, after hastily scratching a kiss at the bottom, refused to let herself add anything else — and folded the letter hastily in thirds and stuffed it into the interior pocket of her jacket as she stood. She crossed her office, and, after grabbing a bit of Floo Powder out of the pot, stepped into the fire and travelled home.

* * *

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	10. Chapter 10

**Happy Saturday! **

**The sun is shining, the air is crisp (for now), and I've got an absolutely gorgeous cuppa in my hands and, my friends, life doesn't get any better than this, does it?**

**I hope you enjoy this chapter and I'll see you all tomorrow! x**

* * *

The next week was one of the most stressful of her entire life.

And she'd had some incredibly stressful weeks — as Minister, as Head of the Auror Office, as an Auror — so the fact that this stood out?

Well, that _alone _was significant.

The first thirty-six hours, of course, were utter madness. They were worse for Moody, even worse for the Aurors he had stationed around the UK, but Lily was fairly sure she hadn't slept once — she'd gone home that first night and stared at the ceiling and then, when she went home the next evening, she was sort of in and out of sleep until Moody owled and she had to drag herself back into the office again.

And honestly, there was only so much that a wideye potion could do.

Though she would happily have sacrificed all her sleep all over again if it meant that the rest of the investigation would be as productive as the first thirty-six hours had been.

Because early in the morning on the seventeenth, Moody informed her that they'd caught at least one of the people they believed to be immediately responsible for the explosion.

Mid-day on the seventeenth, they raided a house in Huntly. Three more people were arrested. They gathered a massive amount of evidence.

Late on the eighteenth, the Auror Office received the approval of the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot to hold the suspects for fourteen days without charge.

They were technically allowed to request up to twenty-eight days for pre-charge detention, but it just didn't sit right with her. She knew these cases were serious — Moody had reminded her as much when he was in her office early afternoon on the eighteenth arguing with her about it — but she wasn't going to hold people for four full weeks without charge.

_Yes, _it was permissible by law, but that didn't make it right.

Moody hadn't been happy about it — he'd done quite a bit of snapping while he was in her office — but, no matter what the _Prophet _said (and the _Prophet _was saying a lot these days), she wasn't trying to fucking kneecap his investigation.

'I want these people as badly as you do, Alastor,' Lily'd snapped, jabbing her finger into her desk. 'But even if you got authorisation for a twenty-eight day hold, I'd override it. A twenty-eight day detention without charge is unconscionable and un-fucking-necessary.'

Moody had been more upset with her than he had been in a long time after that meeting. But he'd also left the office grimly determined to turn around with as much admissible evidence as was physically possible to gather over the next fortnight and, a few nights in, he'd managed a fair bit.

Every single dark artefact they'd recovered to date had been tested and logged, they'd run Priori Incantatem through the wands of those they'd arrested and created a record of the spells cast for the last fortnight. Frank Longbottom's team of Aurors had scoured the still barely-standing oil platform out in the North Sea for any bits of evidence and, though most of it had been washed away by the sea or incinerated in the explosion, they'd managed to pull a few bits that were conclusive.

A few bits that were admissible in court.

And then one of the kids they'd arrested at the Huntly house — he was barely eighteen, that kid, just fresh out of Hogwarts — had agreed to talk in exchange for a lighter sentence.

And that, _that, _had been just what they were waiting for.

They still hadn't filed formal charges by the end of that first week — Moody was keen to wait the full pre-charge detention period to see if he might not be able to rustle up some more evidence or convince someone else to talk — but Lily knew, from the evidence that they'd assembled, that they'd have a strong case when they finally brought this first round to the Wizengamot.

And the confidence in that — in their investigations, in the teams doing the work, in the belief that they were truly making some strides and were going to come out of this on the other side more quickly than they originally thought — made it so that she was surprisingly optimistic when she met James just prior to their scheduled meeting wither Amelia, Arthur, and Moody that Friday.

James was standing beside his desk when Lily stepped through the fire that evening. He looked exhausted — his hair was standing straight up on the front of his head like he'd been fussing with it all evening and his eyes weren't nearly as bright as she was used to seeing them — but he smiled softly at her as she climbed out of the grate and stepped forward to meet her, hand extended.

'Minister.'

She reached out and took his hand. She intended to shake, to smile and say, 'Prime Minister. How are you this evening?', but the moment her hand slid into his —

He brushed his thumb along the back of her hand, his eyes on hers, and she watched as his expression sparked and she —

She'd forgotten he was like this. That he made her feel like this. Which was absurd because it had only been a week, but it had been a _hell _of a week and —

She squeezed his hand before she cleared her throat and pulled her hand from his.

'So,' she took a slow breath. 'Everyone else is scheduled to arrive in a moment, but I wanted to pop over here a few minutes before everyone else gets here. If that's alright?'

James nodded, 'Of course,' before he turned a bit towards the cart in the corner. 'How many people are going to be here? So I can pop the kettle on?'

'Oh, you don't need to —' James shot her a look and Lily sighed. 'It'll be five of us.'

James tipped his head at her and pulled the kettle off the base. 'I'll be right back, then. I've just got to go add a bit more water.'

Lily nodded and James flashed her a quick smile before he opened his door and walked off down the corridor.

She stood in the centre of the office for a moment, shifting her weight between her feet. She pulled her wand out of the interior pocket of her jacket absentmindedly and twirled it lightly through her fingers as she started wandering around, taking everything in.

In all the times she'd been here, Lily hadn't ever actually had a proper look around. She knew most of the shapes of the space, she could picture it well enough in her mind — she knew where his desk was, where the tea cart was, knew that he had bookshelves full of reports and other official things lining the far wall directly opposite the fireplace, that he had a wall of windows behind his desk, that he had a pair of cosy armchairs directly opposite. She knew the general shape of the place, but she realised, now that she was standing here, that so many of the details had escaped her notice until now.

He had an 'I Am CFC' mug — some football thing? — set on his bookshelf, and it wasn't just reports there, but biographies and topical nonfiction, too. On the tea cart, between the tea tin and the biscuit tin, was a small jar of jellies that was absolutely packed to the brim and, on the bottom shelf, he had a tin of Quality Street leftover from Christmas that she had half a mind of open to see if there were any of the purple ones left because my _god _she hadn't had one of those in ages, but she managed to get a handle on herself before she completely violated the bounds of James' privacy.

Some people might argue that Quality Street privacy wasn't a privacy worth respecting, but Lily knew better.

Still, she hadn't had those in — god, it had to have been _years _now — and she was probably going to ask him at some point before she left that evening if she could have one because now she couldn't stop thinking about them.

The toffee deluxe. The _coconut_.

Okay, she needed to step away.

She probably should have walked over to the arm chairs and sat down, should have waited patiently for James to walk back in, but she wandered over behind his desk instead. She was just being nosy, really, she didn't need to be snooping like this and she knew it was weird, what she was doing it, but she couldn't help it.

She could blame it on her investigator's brain.

That wasn't entirely accurate, sure, but it was what she was going to choose to believe.

And as long as you recognised your own biases….

She pulled James' chair — a massive, leather thing — out from under his desk, the wheels catching a bit on the rug as she moved it. She didn't pull it out far, just far enough that she could slip in between the desk and slide into the seat. She had to perch on the end so that her feet would touch the floor — she knew he was taller than her, but she didn't think he was _that _much taller than her — and she swivelled the chair side to side as she scanned the top of his desk.

His desk, unlike hers, was fairly neat. There were a few piles — stacks of paperwork that were mostly organised but still had the occasional piece that stuck out at an odd angle and gave a more dishevelled look to the whole thing — but the area in the centre of his desk, where his laptop computer was, was clean. It was just the computer — open, but, off, or dark, at least, she didn't know — a small coaster where he probably set his tea — it was the same blue as that mug on his shelf and had "Chelsea Football Club" on, so she was right, that mug _was _a football thing — a little pad of paper and a small wire cup full of pens.

He had two framed photographs on his desk, too, on the other side near the stack of papers. One of a younger James — he must have been uni aged, maybe a little older — a bright, beaming smile on his face with his arm around another man with shiny, shoulder length black hair who looked, honest to god, like an actual underwear model, and the other of James with two older people that absolutely had to be his parents.

His mother was wearing a jewel-green hijab and a bright yellow jumper and she was looking up at her son with the most brilliant smile and Lily could feel it — the love radiating off her — and James' father, in his otherwise stiff-looking suit, was beaming into the camera, his arm around James' shoulders, and they all looked so happy. She wasn't sure when this photograph was taken — James didn't look significantly younger than he did now — but she hoped that this was how things still were with them. That James and his parents (and that horrifically sexy man that — _oh_, maybe that was his brother, Sirius) were still as happy and proud and carefree as they looked in these photographs.

And it struck her, then, how warm this office was. How personal. He'd only been here a few months, nearly a year, but not quite, but already this space had more of James in it than her office had of her.

He just had this way of infusing himself into spaces. Of becoming a part of them. And for a lot of people, that tendency might have caused them to fade away, to become part of the background, but for James, it made him at home in every room that he stepped into.

The door to James' office nudged open and Lily's hand immediately tightened around her wand as she raised it, without thinking, towards the door. James raised an eyebrow at her, his eyes flicking from her to the wand in her hand and back again, before he shut the door with his elbow and walked over to set the kettle on the base.

'Afraid I was an intruder?'

Lily shrugged as she slid her wand back into the interior pocket of her jacket. 'Old habit.'

James hummed and something twitched in his expression before he turned and began preparing the tea pot.

'Enjoying my desk chair?'

Lily had a momentary impulse to shoot up and run around the desk, but she knew that the sudden burst of action would give her away more than anything.

Not that there was necessarily anything to be given away.

She leant back in the chair and James turned around at the creak in the leather. She smiled at him, folded her hands, and rested them on her stomach.

'I wanted to see things from your perspective,' she said. And it was true, actually. She hadn't realised it at the time — or maybe she had — but it was true.

James raised an eyebrow. 'Oh?'

She nodded. 'I like to do that. It helps me get into someone's head.'

She used to do it all the time as an Auror, but that didn't seem like something she necessarily needed to share at the moment.

'And you wanted to get into my head.' He wasn't asking, just quietly observing. He had the faintest shadow of something — a smile — on his face, and Lily felt her heart squeeze.

She tipped her head to one side. Shrugged one shoulder. 'I guess.'

His lips curved into a smile and Lily held his gaze for a moment before she cleared her throat and pushed up out of his chair.

'Alright, so let's talk about who you're about to meet.'

James looked like he was going to protest, but he just nodded and, when the kettle clicked off, turned back to pour water.

'So there will be three people, besides the two of us. Remus Lupin —'

'Your undersecretary. And best friend.'

Lily nodded, faintly surprised that he remembered. 'Yes. He won't be able to make these meetings — which is a good thing, really, because he works too much and I was the one who told him not to worry about coming to them, but I'm still a little crushed about it. Mostly because he's immeasurably valuable, but also because he's my second brain.'

James snorted. 'I feel the exact same way about Margot. She's my chief of staff,' James clarified.

Lily hummed. 'Ah, right. I think I remember you mentioning her at one point.'

'I must've done. I literally can't function without her.'

Lily snorted. 'God, I feel the exact same way about Remus. But like, in every aspect of my life. I've been dependent on him since I was eleven.'

James looked like he wanted to pursue that, but Lily smiled at him and continued before he could say anything further.

'Anyway, we _will _be joined by three other Ministry officials — Arthur Weasley, Head of the Muggle Liaison Office, Amelia Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and Alastor Moody, Head of the Auror Office.'

James nodded. 'Is there anything I need to know about them?'

'Uh….'

There were a lot of things she could say, truthfully. About her time with Moody in the Auror Office, how Moody was gruff and determined and swift to act, but never reckless. How Arthur was the first pureblood wizard she'd met that genuinely felt no ill-regard towards Muggles or Muggleborns and how that, honestly, had probably kept him sequestered in the corner of the Ministry for years before she came into power and finally made his office the critical one is so desperately needed to be. How Amelia was tough — _tough_ — and she could be coolly analytical, but it was never, fully, without heart. How she was the type of person that was willing to be convinced, but she needed to see the evidence.

There were a lot of things she could say but — she glanced up at the ornate, and probably antique, golden clock set on the wall overtop the armchairs — they were rapidly running out of time.

And maybe it was best to let him form his own opinions anyway.

'Nothing I can think of.'

James hummed, but it was masked by the sound of the silver-haired wizard in the painting near the fire clearing his throat.

James and Lily both turned, instinctively, to look at it, and the wizard tipped his head up a little haughilty as he spoke.

'They're ready when you are, Minister.'

Lily had half a mind to scoff at the ridiculously self-important look on Ethelred's face, but she knew better. It would only derail him and start him going on and _on _about it and they didn't have time for that this evening.

And, she supposed, it would be rude.

She nodded her head and smiled at him. 'Thank you, Ethelred. Send them through.'

Ethelred walked out of his painting and Lily turned to look at James. He was standing stockstill with a mildly shocked look on his face and Lily felt a thrill of anxiety streak through her. What if he was freaking out? What if he wasn't ready for any of this? Sure, he'd asked for this, but that didn't mean that he was totally prepared for the fact that four wizards were about to step out of his fire and what if —

Lily took a deep breath.

Stepped towards him.

'You ready?'

'His name is _Ethelred_?'

'What? The painting?' James nodded and she breathed a laugh. 'Yeah. Why?'

A smile started stretching across James' face. 'I don't know. I just — I didn't know his name until now and —'

The fire flashed green behind them and they both spun immediately towards the flames.

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	11. Chapter 11

**See you all next week with more chapters**

**I'm so excited... ;)**

**I hope you all have a brilliant week x**

* * *

Arthur stepped out of the fire first, and Lily barely suppressed a laugh at the excited look on Arthur's face as his feet hit the floor. He was glowing, positively glowing, as he scanned James' office, and his smile got impossibly wider as he stepped forward to say hello.

'Minister.' Arthur smiled at her and shook her hand, and Lily couldn't help but grin at him as he stepped sideways and held his hand out to James. 'Prime Minister. I'm Arthur Weasley. It's absolutely wonderful to meet you.'

They shook hands and James smiled at him. 'It's lovely to meet you, Arthur. And please, just James.'

Arthur's smiled widened and he opened his mouth to say something else as the fire turned green again and they all turned to see Amelia stepping out of the fire followed almost immediately by Moody.

Amelia gave Lily a small smile as she stepped forward towards them. 'Minister.'

Lily tipped her head and smiled. 'Amelia.'

Amelia shook hands with James — Lily heard him tell Amelia, too, to _call me_ _James, please_ — while Moody stepped forward to say hi to Lily.

'How's this going to go, you think?' Moody asked in a whisper when he reached her.

Lily sighed and gave a slight shrug. 'Haven't the slightest.'

Moody grinned at her before he stepped over to shake James' hand.

Lily watched quietly for a minute or so as James chatted comfortably with her colleagues. And she shouldn't be surprised that he was able to get on with them — he was, after all, a politician — but she couldn't help but be at least a _little _surprised. These were people that, a year ago, he hadn't known existed. They were representative of a government, an entire _world_, that he hadn't known existed. And it was amazing to her that he was able to stand there and chat with them so casually, like it was nothing. Like their magical ability, the government they represented, the world they came from, like all of it was just… a thing about them. A facet of their personality. Their history.

And she couldn't believe that it could be like that. That he could accept, so easily, something that was so outside everything else that he'd known.

And, there was something so…. Well.

There was just something about it. Watching him like this.

Lily cleared her throat.

'Okay, so, James?' He turned to look at her, the look on his face brightening just slightly. 'Have you got a meeting room or?'

James nodded. 'Yes, it'll be just down the hall. Let me just —'

James hoisted the tea tray in his arms and, after glancing back to check that everyone was following him, started out of his office down the corridor. They didn't walk far — just out of the main office area and down a few doors — before James was softly nudging open the door into a small meeting room. There wasn't much there — just a small round table and a dresser with lamps — but small and out of the way was perfect for these meetings.

The last thing they needed was for someone to find out that James was meeting with four magical people every week.

Though even the suggestion that he was meeting with four non-Magical people outside the confines of his daily schedule was something likely to cause concern.

'There are much more stately rooms I could've chosen,' James said as he walked in and set the tea tray in the centre of the table, 'but I'm not exactly keen on the one and the other one — well, it wouldn't go unnoticed if we were in the other one.' He flashed them a grin before he started lifting cups up off the tea tray and lining them up neatly in front of him.

James asked everyone how they took their tea and they carried on chatting lightly as everyone chose seats around the table, sliding easily into a story about Arthur's sons sneaking a garden gnome into the house the day before last and begging Molly to let them keep him. Lily moved to stand behind the chair nearest her — the one that put her back fully to the door — and Moody caught her eye and shook his head at her almost imperceptibly.

She knew exactly what he was thinking as he settled into the seat directly across her, the chair with a clear view of the door, but Lily just winked at him and pulled out her seat so she could stand closer to the table.

The chat around the table began to fall away as James passed the tea around and everyone settled into their seats. It was replaced, as the table fell totally silent, with a heavy, almost anxious feeling in the air, a sort of weighty anticipation.

It was the importance of everything they were about to talk about, but, too, the significance of the moment itself.

They'd never been here before. Not collectively.

Lily brought her mug to her lips and took a small sip of tea — it was perfect, absolutely perfect — and, after a quick glance at James, she pulled in a slow breath and folded her hands neatly on the table.

'Let's begin, shall we?'

They spent the next half hour catching James up on everything that had happened that week — the arrests, the information they'd gathered, the steps currently in process — and, while Lily had been nervous about how they'd all mesh together, James and her Ministry colleagues, James' questions and suggestions fitted easily into the things that they'd already been talking about back at the Ministry.

She didn't exactly think that James was going to sit down at this table and bang his fists and start making declarations, but she knew that this conversation was going to be a delicate one no matter how civil everyone at the table was prepared to be. Because it was important, this was, and everyone had an opinion about how it should be handled and the intensity of it all made it feel that much more pressing that things be handled immediately and in exactly the right way. She expected things to be difficult sometimes, but she was heartened by the fact that this meeting, this initial step in this initial meeting, at least, seemed to be going well.

She was sure that someone — her or James or Moody or someone — would end up banging their fists at some point, but she was glad that they'd managed to set something of a civil tone.

At least in the beginning.

'So,' James leant back in his chair, one arm resting casually on the arm of his chair. His legs were crossed and he was resting his half-full mug of tea on his knee. 'You've made a fair bit of progress, then.'

Moody nodded. 'More than we expected.'

'And your pre-charge holding period —'

'Is fourteen days,' Moody said, his gaze flicking briefly towards Lily. James nodded absently, his eyes going a bit unfocused for a moment.

'So nine more days,' he said, looking up. He scanned the table. 'How much pressure can we put on them in nine days?'

Lily leant forward onto the table. 'Well, we've got them in Azkaban at the moment — wizard prison,' Lily clarified, seeing James' confusion.

Moody nodded. 'And you really don't want to spend time there.'

Lily nodded again. 'Yeah. It's,' she shook her head, 'really nasty, actually.'

James frowned. 'In what way?'

'It's —' She thought for a moment before she shook her head again and exhaled. 'It's hard to describe. We have these creatures called Dementors running the place and —' A chill shot through her and Lily pressed her hand into the table to steady herself.

Even just thinking about them —

Lily cleared her throat. 'Anyway, it's not exactly a great place to be. The idea of being locked up there, alone, usually encourages people to loosen up.'

There was a look on James' face that Lily couldn't quite read and it was unsettling, not knowing what was going on in his head.

'What are dementors?'

'They're….' She hesitated, partially because, despite her N.E.W.T. in Care of Magical Creatures, she couldn't figure out how to describe dementors in a way that made sense, but, really, she was hesitating because she thought she knew where this conversation was headed.

It was a conversation she'd had over and over again at the Ministry. And, clearly, those conversations hadn't come of anything.

'Dementors are shaped like humans covered in a dark, hooded cloak. They… feed on positive emotion.' She nearly moved to run her hand through her hair, but she caught the nervous tick and pressed her hand gently into the table. 'Over time, due to increased exposure, prisoners tend to give way to negative emotion.'

She wasn't even remotely getting at it, what it was really like. What it was like, walking through the halls of that fucking place, listening to people — the newer people — screaming, seeing the long-term prisoners lying, curled on their sides, deadly silent, in the back corner of their cells.

She wasn't explaining it properly, she knew she wasn't.

James looked horrified. 'So you're torturing people?'

'I —' Lily took a deep breath. She could feel Arthur, Moody, and Amelia looking at her, but she refused to pull her eyes from James'.

She inhaled.

Exhaled.

'Yes. Essentially.'

James must not have been expecting her to be honest, because his eyebrows shot up and he was speechless for a second.

And, really, she probably shouldn't've been honest about it. She probably should have glossed it, spun it — it was the more tactical political move and maybe she should've taken that path but —

She'd done enough of that. And he was right. James was _right. _

James frowned. 'Are you — Do you —' He took a breath. 'Do you _support _that?'

'No, of course not —'

'Then why's it still active?!'

'I can't just move to abolish it —'

'You're the _Minister._' James looked absolutely scandalised. 'Maybe you can't do it alone, but you hold an immense amount of power —'

'I know that.' Her voice was hard now, heated, and she saw Moody pick up his tea to conceal a smile out of the corner of her eye. 'I fully understand the lengths of my power, thank you. And while I agree with you that, yes, Azkaban should _absolutely _be dismantled — and I've moved, more than once, to do just that — now is not the time —'

'Why not?'

'Because we're in the middle of an active terrorist campaign,' she snapped. 'And not only would we seriously weaken our own position, but, if the public outcry is what I expect it would be, I'd be looking at resignation.'

James' eyebrows shot up. 'So this is a power thing?'

Lily's blood pressure immediately spiked.

She exhaled slowly in an effort to keep her voice even. 'You're deliberately misunderstanding me.'

'I'm —' James pressed his lips together. Took a breath. 'I'm not trying to. I just don't understand your position on this.'

'What's unclear?'

'You're against it. You're in charge. It's still going on.' He punctuated each statement with a tap of his index finger against the tabletop.

'I — look, can we put this aside for right now? This is something you and I clearly need to have a conversation about, but, right now, we need to focus on the immediate task at hand.'

James looked like he wanted to push back but he nodded stiffly and took a sip of his tea. After a moment, he cleared his throat. 'Have you seized their assets?'

Lily frowned. 'What do you mean?'

'For the people currently under investigation. Bank accounts, personal and business assets.' He ticked them off on his hands. 'We freeze accounts when we believe someone to be connected to terrorist activity and —' He broke off at the look on Lily's face. 'You all don't do that.'

Lily shook her head. 'No. I — We seize illegal contraband, but freezing personal assets... I don't know that we've even got any legislation in effect that would enable us to do that.' She looked towards Amelia and Amelia shook her head. She reached into her jacket and pulled out a quill, a small bottle of ink, and a bit of parchment and jotted a quick note.

'I'll look into it,' Amelia said over the scratching of her quill. 'If that's something we'd pursue, we might be able to quickly amend existing legislation.'

Lily nodded. 'I was just thinking about the Dark Artefacts Act revision in 2014. I think it's sufficiently vague, but we'd have to —'

'Look into the exact wording,' Amelia said, nodding. 'I'll get on it and report back.'

Lily tipped her head in acknowledgement and took another sip of her tea. 'Thanks.'

'We should bring someone from Gringotts in on that conversation,' Arthur said, leaning forward slightly. 'We don't want to just dictate to them. And they're much more informed about the magic in Gringotts anyway — that information could be useful.'

Amelia grabbed her quill again and scratched out another note while Lily nodded. 'Mmm, that's a good idea, Arthur. Gringotts is our bank,' Lily added, glancing at James. 'Run by goblins. Wizards have been, uh, _difficult _for goblins to work with in the past, so our cooperative relationship exists on something of a knifepoint.'

Everyone around the table was silent for a moment before Lily cleared her throat and sat up just a bit straighter in her chair.

'Alright, so we're going to look into the freezing of assets — I do think that's a brilliant idea.' She glanced at James. 'Do we have anything else we need to talk about tonight?'

She was quiet for a long moment to leave space for someone to speak up, but when no one said anything, Lily leant back in her chair and drank the last bit of her tea.

'Okay, so, action items — Amelia, you're going to look into the D.A.A. revision and see if there might be some wiggle room in the language.' Lily looked towards Amelia, who nodded. 'I can reach out to someone in the Goblin Liaison Office, see if they have a contact in Gringotts that they work with regularly? Or, Arthur, how did you want to handle this?'

'Ragnok might be available to work on this,' Arthur said. 'I know he chairs — well, I can't remember the name of the committee, but he chairs one of the committees out of Goblin Liaison, so he's in the Ministry at least once every other week.'

Lily hummed. 'Okay. I'll reach out to Creswell and see if he might be willing to put us in touch. And it might be worth bringing Creswell on this, too,' she added. She looked at James. 'He's the head of our Goblin Liaison Office.'

Arthur nodded. 'Dirk's great. And he might know other goblins who might be willing to work on this with us. A variety of perspectives can only be helpful.'

Lily nodded in agreement. 'Exactly. Okay, so I'll reach out to Dirk. Arthur, do you know Ragnok personally, or?'

'Yeah. We've served on a few things together. I can talk to him.'

'Brilliant. Other than that, Moody — anything you need from any of us?'

Moody shook his head. 'Nope. Just your continued support.' He shot her a grin and Lily smirked.

'If anything changes during the week, if you could let us all know?'

Moody tipped his head at her before he, too, drained the rest of his tea.

They hammered out a few final details — set deadlines for their action items, renewed their stated interest in meeting at the same time next Friday evening — before everyone pushed up from the table. Lily stretched her arms — as subtly as she could manage — and smiled as she walked around the table and started out of the conference room.

Lily pulled a small bag of Floo Powder out of her pocket as they walked through James' door a minute later and held it out to Arthur.

'Here,' she nodded towards the bag. 'I've brought some.'

Arthur grinned at her, 'Cheers, Lily,' and he took a pinch in his left hand before he turned to James and held out his right. 'It was great to meet you, James. I look forward to working with you.'

James took Arthur's hand and they shook. 'I look forward to working with you, Arthur. Send my best to Molly and the kids.'

Arthur's smile widened and he nodded. 'Will do. Have a lovely evening, everyone.'

One by one, Arthur, then Moody, then Amelia left James' office. They all took a moment to say goodbye, all expressed some sort of optimism about working together moving forward, all smiled and wished everyone remaining a lovely evening — it was all the same, just to a smaller and smaller audience, but as people slowly trickled out, Lily started to feel something build in her stomach.

A new kind of anticipation. She wasn't sure what for, but there it was.

When Amelia finally left James' office a few minutes later, Lily felt something heavy settle between her and James.

Maybe if she didn't acknowledge it….

James turned and, when his eyes found hers, she watched as he let all the energy fall out of his features. He sighed heavily and reached up underneath his glasses to rub at one of his eyes.

'Well, I think that went well.'

Lily raised an eyebrow. 'Do you?'

He nodded. 'It sounds like you lot have made a fair bit of progress.' She wasn't sure if he meant to do it, but he took one small step towards her as he spoke.

'Well, I can't believe how much that one suspect has given us.' She said it before she could think better if it, and the minute the words were out of her mouth, Lily wanted to kick herself.

James stiffened immediately before he sighed and scrubbed a hand across his jaw. 'I'm sorry about what happened in there.'

Lily didn't say anything.

'It's just that I'm having a really hard time understanding your position on this,' James continued. 'And, you know, I understand that it's complicated — I'm no stranger,' he laughed awkwardly, 'to my own complicated issues, but I just think that if you truly don't feel like it should be open — I mean, you're the _Minister. _And that doesn't mean that you control everything that happens in the government, you have a lot of sway.'

'I've tried to close Azkaban twice in my career.' James' eyes widened just a touch but, thankfully, he stayed silent. Lily took a breath.

'When I was an auror, my first few years of my career, I railed against Azkaban. Every chance I got. Moody — Alastor, who was in the meeting with us today — he was my department head at the time and he's heard me say every fucking thing you can imagine about that prison. He knows just how badly I want to shut it down.

'When it was my turn to Head the Auror Office — almost fifteen years ago now — I got in front of the Wizengamot and I made a motion to close the prison. Nobody even seconded my motion. Nobody. There were hundreds of other people in that room and not _one _of them seconded that motion. That wasn't a vote, that wasn't a final declaration — it was a motion to open debate. _Nobody_ thought it was a good idea — or if they did, no one was willing to go on the record and saying as much.

'The second time I tried to close Azkaban, I was Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. I'd been Head for about a year at that time. My motion was seconded that time, but, when it got to the floor vote, I had three votes in my favour. Three votes. It was nearly unanimous to keep it open. So I know what I'm talking about when I say that there is absolutely no support for this. Especially not now. Especially when we're in the middle of _this. _Campaign of fucking blood purists who are doing everything to ensure that people are killed.

'And you want me to get up in front of people and say that we have to close down the only prison we've got. We've got no other backup plans, no alternatives, but we're going to close this prison —'

James shook his head. 'I don't expect you to do it without an alternative.'

'But that's what people are going to hear. And maybe if I go up there and bring these plans — say we'll set up alternative prisons or we'll change the way we run Azkaban or we'll do any number of other things — all they're going to hear is that I'm going to take people, convicted murders, and put them back out into the world. That I'm going to work to make their lives easier.

'And I'm not saying that I agree with those people — I think they're wrong — but I'm saying that now is not the time to put that forward.'

'But, Lily,' James exhaled, 'there's never a good time to put things like this forward. The time is always yesterday because it never should have been done in the first place.'

'But that's not really an argument that stands, is it? Of course it shouldn't have started! Of course it shouldn't have happened! But it started! It started literally hundreds of years ago and people have gotten used to it, haven't they? If I could go back that far in time, I'd end it before it even began because it's horrific. And I know you probably don't believe me when I say that, but I honest to god mean it. It is _horrific_. It is unconscionable what people are put through. It really, truly is. And I don't want to be in a position where I'm defending that and I'm — I'm pissed off with you because I feel like that's the corner you've shoved me in. Where I either agree to do what you tell me I should do or I'm sitting here having to defend a programme of torture.'

'Aren't you defending it by essentially keeping it alive?'

Lily threw up her hands. 'I suppose, yeah. You're right.'

Neither of them said anything for a long moment. Finally, Lily sighed and took a small, barely perceptible step towards him.

'I know that you think that this is partially just a power thing and I'm afraid of losing my position as Minister and — I mean, yeah, I'm terrified of losing this job. Minister's have fallen on this sword before and I'm terrified of handing this office over to someone who doesn't care, someone like Crouch who will just let all of this die. Someone who won't bother to work with you, who won't bother to take up these issues until wizards start getting killed. James, I am terrified of that. I am terrified of putting another generation of people through the things I endured.'

Neither of them said anything for a long moment and Lily took another deep breath and straightened her shoulders.

'I have one hill,' she said. 'One hill to die on. I'm not like these other career blokes who get hill after hill after _hill_. I get one hill. I get one fight. And James, _this_ is my fight.

'Azkaban is _wrong. _It's wrong and it's disgusting and I know that I am fully culpable and that it doesn't matter how I feel if I don't do anything about it. I know all those things. But I have a finite amount of political capital and I have to use it where I think I can make the most impact and this is it. This is where all my time and energy and attention are going to go.'

Neither of them said anything for a long moment. Lily could feel the tension, thick in the air between them, and she hated this feeling, hated the stiffness of it, the feeling like she couldn't move through it.

The tension pulled tight between them but, after a minute, James exhaled, his head tipping just slightly to one side, and she physically felt the room lighten.

'Yeah, okay.' He ran a hand through his hair. 'I — I get that. Really,' he said, because she must have been looking sceptical. 'I _know _there are things I essentially gave up on to fight the Brexit fight — I'm getting to them now, but it's only because I won the fight I chose for myself.'

Lily nodded but, still, she didn't say anything. She felt like she could feel the "but" hovering at the end of his sentence, the, "I understand your choice, _but_", and she couldn't get past the feeling like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Couldn't get past the feeling that he was just waiting to judge her. Waiting to dismiss her.

Not that she needed the validation, she just —

'I don't like it,' he said. 'I hate thinking about it and I don't really think I even understand it. But I understand your choice. And — I mean,' he shook his head and his eyes flicked down to the floor for a moment. 'Really, I'm doing the same thing, aren't I?'

She quirked an eyebrow and he exhaled. 'I'm choosing my hill. Between this prison and these fucking arseholes trying to kill people?' He was quiet for a beat. 'The choice seems pretty clear to me. Even if I don't like having to make it.'

Lily nodded mutely and pressed her lips together. 'Welcome to my exact headspace.'

James breathed a soft laugh and Lily felt the room deflate still further. She sucked in a breath, a full, deep breath, and the lightness across her shoulders now —

'Your headspace is a nightmare.'

Lily chuckled softly. 'It is. But it comes with the job.'

James exhaled hard and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. 'God, isn't that the truth.'

They stood quietly for another moment, just looking at each other. Finally, after a beat or two, Lily cleared her throat. 'Well, I should be getting home. It's getting late.'

James nodded. 'Yeah. I've got a few more reports to read before I head up for the night, so I should probably get started on those anyway.'

'I'll owl you,' Lily said. She took two steps back towards the fire and James followed her forward. 'I can't seem to stop owling you these days.'

It was true. Since that owl that first night last week, she and James had sent each other little notes throughout the week. He could, of course, only send his when her owl was there to deliver them, though, and it got Lily thinking that they needed some more reliable way to communicate to one another.

And then —

_Idiot_. She was an idiot.

'Have you got a notepad?'

James frowned at her sudden topic switch but he nodded and walked over to his desk. He tugged open one of the drawers in the centre, pulled out a small notepad, and handed it to her. It was unlined — her preference — and had a little football in the lower right corner. She looked up at him, a small smirk on her face and James rolled his eyes at her.

'Mum got it for me. She was in Primark the other day and thought I'd like it.'

Lily's smile widened. 'That's sweet. Do you mind if I, uh — do a bit of magic on it?'

If James was surprised at her question, he didn't show it. He just nodded and she watched as his eyes lit up with unmistakable interest.

It was embarrassing, what his attention did to her.

She pulled her wand out of her blazer and rolled it unconsciously in her hand so that her grip was just right. She waved her wand once to duplicate the notebook — James had gasped at that and good lord he better be impressed when all was said and done — and then set them neatly beside one another on the desktop. She waved her wand — the motion had to be just right or it wouldn't work but god it was hard to concentrate with him watching her this intensely —

She set her wand down before she plucked a pen out of the cup on his desk and wrote herself a small note — _Hi Lily, this is Lily_ — and waited.

And then — she exhaled hard — the ink sunk back into the paper she'd written on and appeared, all at once, on the notepad beside it. She turned around, an embarrassingly proud smile on her face.

'Here.' She handed him one of the notepads and James looked down at it, a slightly stunned look on his face. 'This is faster than an owl,' she said. 'Whatever you write on that paper,' she pointed at the pad in his hands, 'will appear on my notepad and then I can reply.'

'Lily, that's —' He looked up and met her gaze. 'Lily, that's fucking amazing.'

She beamed. 'Thank you. I can't take full credit, though. Remus did this to one of my notebooks while we were in school together and we still use it to chat together in the office without having to get up.'

James snorted. 'I can't wait to meet this Remus.'

'You'll really like him,' Lily said. 'He's hard not to like, honestly, but I think you two will really get on.'

'Anyway.' Lily cleared her throat. 'I better get going.'

James nodded. 'Yeah. I should head to bed, as well. I've got a whole day ahead tomorrow.'

Lily breathed a laugh. 'Funny how that always happens, eh?'

James grinned at her. '"Funny" is certainly one word for it.'

They fell quiet again, a different kind of weight settling between them now. She knew that she was going to leave — she did have to get home and finish up some of the things she'd been working on — but now, standing here, that little notepad in her pocket, James' eyes on hers….

Now, she couldn't help but think about the last time they'd been in this office alone.

Well, the last time they'd been alone and things hadn't been actively falling apart in the world outside.

Lily hesitated for a moment before, finally bucking up the courage, she stepped forward, pressed herself onto her toes, and dropped a featherlight kiss to his cheek. She held herself there for a moment, maybe two, before she lowered back down and took a small step back.

'Good night, James.'

She heard him suck in a soft breath as he nodded. 'Good night, Lily. I'll see you next week.'

* * *

**Find me on tumblr - same username x**


	12. Chapter 12

**I have to mow the grass again today and I literally hate it so much? Why does the grass keep growing? What trash ass human made it so that people had to cut their lawns? **

**Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter... ;)**

* * *

The next few weeks went much the same as the first.

Moody and the Auror Office dug deeper and deeper into the trenches. They occasionally turned over something useful, but most of it was, as Moody always said, "a process of elimination". Figuring out where the useful bits of information _weren't_ so that you had a better idea of where they might be.

It wasn't always the most effective method of investigation, but the trail had gone cold surprisingly quickly, especially after such a productive burst at the beginning, and looking this way usually gave them something to go on before long.

And things were going alright for a while. Moody was only digging up minor pieces of evidence, tiny pieces of the puzzle, and they didn't have any evidence strong enough to support additional arrests and, as the whole thing stretched on, the _Prophet _started talking more and more about _Minister Evans losing her touch? _and the pressure was starting to mount in the Ministry but, really, things were going alright.

There hadn't been anymore attacks since the oil platform, hadn't even been _whispers _of another attack.

But that, if anything, only made Lily more anxious.

They were regrouping. Biding their time. And she didn't have any evidence to support that, but she could feel it in her bones and she just — she _knew _it was true.

And then, in the middle of February, they set fire to a leisure centre in Swindon.

Two people died.

Thirty-nine were injured.

And that, it seemed was the pattern.

Lie low. Regroup. Strike.

It was a cycle that ran over a few weeks. Never long enough for things to really seem like they'd calmed down. Never long enough that they were able to get out ahead of them and get enough intelligence to stop it. And it was frustrating, so _fucking _frustrating, and the longer they went without catching them, the more the pressure increased and the faster the attacks came and —

There was a new story in the _Prophet _every day. Weekly questions about her leadership in the Wizengamot. "_It seems, perhaps, that the Minister isn't the right person to lead us through this moment of renewed crisis" _and "_perhaps we need someone with a firmer hand dealing with these issues"._

And the suggestion that she wasn't the most qualified, the most dedicated to this… that suggestion cut her deeper than anything else.

But she couldn't — she couldn't bend to the criticism. She wouldn't.

No matter how many fucking articles ran in the _Prophet_.

It was natural in moments of crisis to be critical of the people at the top — she'd been on the other side of this conversation before and she hadn't, not once, withheld her opinion — and she knew that these concerns, most of them, were coming from a positive place. That most of these people just wanted this to end, wanted people to stop dying, wanted everything to go back to normal —

But, and it became more and more apparent to Lily the more that they talked about it through the next few weeks, things couldn't go back to the way they'd been.

That place had created these people. Had fostered an environment where they could flourish undetected. Where they could organise and plot and recruit, and they needed to do what they could, all of them, to avoid getting back to that place.

It would take significant legal change. A change in enforcement. A change in the way their entire society was structured.

And that change was slow and hard and resisted at every turn — Lily had nearly lost every single ounce of her cool at a meeting in the Wizengamot in the middle of March when Dolores went on a long, rambling speech about how, "yes, these murders are terrible, but we shouldn't use them as an excuse to take our community and open it up to exposure to the Muggle world. It's too dangerous and who, after all, would stop the Muggles if they started attacking us?" —but the change was necessary and so Lily didn't care that she was struggling to convince people and that she was working herself nearly to death because it was worth it.

It was all worth it if she managed to make even the slightest amount of difference.

Their weekly meetings got more and more urgent, too, as time passed. Because, after the leisure centre, it was a pub in Manchester and then, in early April, it was a soft play centre and _children _and —

They were getting more and more desperate. Lily and James and everyone. They were _desperate_.

And she knew that they — the people they were after — could feel their desperation, and she was doing everything she could to keep a handle on herself because the last thing she needed was to completely lose control.

She needed to maintain her level head. She needed to breathe. Calmly. Needed to consider the facts in front of her and make decisions.

She couldn't do that if she let herself tip over the edge into the panic that was, always, just on the edge of consuming her.

It took more energy that she realised it would, though, maintaining her sense of balance, and so she went home every day more and more exhausted than she had the day before.

She knew that she was rapidly reaching a breaking point — because one way or the other, something had to give — but, for now, she was clinging onto all the pieces of her life and as long as she had them in her grip, she felt like she could move forward.

But every day it was something new.

They attacked a teenager in the street in Bristol.

They burned down a bookshop in Coventry.

They destroyed Ouse Bridge and knocked the M62 out for, well, the foreseeable future.

And Lily hated to admit it, but goddamn if those weren't just the sorts of things that were effective.

It was the disruption of everyday life. The constant feeling that the next big thing might be just around the corner.

It created a steady dread that was hard to ignore and even harder to overcome.

And everything, to date, was an attack on some Muggle location or another, but the longer it went on, the more the _Prophet _started to speculate that "attacks on wizards that are supportive of the Muggle population are, in all likelihood, just around the corner".

They weren't wrong.

A muggleborn student was attacked in Hogsmeade during the April trip to the village. Dumbledore gave a report to the Wizengamot about some smaller incidents that had happened at school — hexing in the corridors, slurs whispered in passing between classes….

It was giving Lily an all too real feeling of déjà vu.

The more that things edged out of control, too, the more anxious James got. The more anxious they all got, really, but Lily noticed it the most in James.

Or maybe she just thought about it the most with James.

She wasn't sure which was more significant.

And it felt silly, thinking about her feelings for James, when the whole world outside their door was absolutely falling apart.

It felt trivial. Juvenile.

Like she was living through a romcom in her head while the rest of her body was in the middle of what was rapidly becoming a war zone.

But still, as the months passed, she found herself thinking about it whenever she had a spare moment. When she was sitting in a meeting about Games and Sports' budget, when she was laying in bed at night, staring at the ceiling because she couldn't fall asleep.

She thought about his hand brushing against her elbow as they walked to his conference room for their Friday meetings. Thought about his fingers grazing hers when he handed her the tea he'd made, the tea that was always just right. She thought about his rushed, slightly cramped handwriting on the notepad in her office, how, despite the fact that it was meant to be a serious communication tool, it ended up being the one place where their other thoughts were given voice. Where they talked, not about work or updates or attacks, but about the lighter things going on during the day — his brother, Sirius, getting into some new, completely mad scenario, her waking up and realising that her favourite jumper had a hole in the shoulder and she'd never been good at those sorts of household spells — and she hadn't realised how important that was, getting all those little things out of her head.

Or, maybe more accurately, she hadn't realised how important it was getting those things out with James in particular.

And she knew that she had bigger things going on in her life at the moment, they both did, but then she thought about the way he smiled at her when she stepped out of the fire and she just couldn't help herself. How he smiled every time — even when his day had been shit, even when he _knew _that she was there to deliver another round of bad news — and even though it was usually just a flash, especially these days, it was always there.

And that steady, constant presence —

She needed that.

Still, she didn't do much more than think about it as the months passed, and, even though she was thinking about it whenever she had a free moment, those moments were so few and far between that, in reality, it didn't really add up to much. They were stolen moments in the middle of the rest of her complete _nightmare _of a day and the nightmare always held centre stage.

And don't get it twisted — it absolutely should be that way.

And, until April, they managed to keep it that way. Balanced on that knifepoint.

They'd all just finished filing out of James conference room the last Friday in April— for once on something of a high note because three of the high profile trials had had positive outcomes and Moody had just made a massive raid up in Sheffield and brought nearly a dozen more people into custody — and they were chatting about James' most recent trip to Brussels. He'd been going to the continent more and more often after the referendum — an attempt, apparently, to patch up relations with the EU despite the fact that, in terms of the legalities, nothing about their situation had really changed much. Article 50 — or, at least, Lily thought that's what it was called — was revoked without much additional fuss, the negotiated deal was torn up and burned (probably), and everything continued operating as it had been the day before the vote in 2016.

Legally, it was almost like the whole thing hadn't even happened. Though you'd never know it from the way James still fretted about it and the frequency of his trips to the continent.

Tonight, though, even that weight seemed lifted off James' shoulders.

'Brussels is lovely,' James said now, smiling at Amelia, 'but honestly, I'm just happy to be home.' His eyes drifted over towards Lily for a moment and his gaze held hers for a breath… two…

Arthur cleared his throat and their eyes snapped apart. Arthur was smiling when Lily flicked her gaze towards him. 'I'm going to head out, see if I can't catch the boys before Molly puts them in bed. I'll get you all a copy of that report I mentioned tomorrow —'

'No, Arthur,' Lily shook her head. 'Monday. There's no rush on it.'

Arthur frowned. 'Are you sure?'

She nodded fervently. 'Absolutely. We've had a bit of a victory, eh? Let's celebrate that for the weekend.'

Arthur looked like he had half a mind to press her on it, and she was sure that Moody wasn't particularly thrilled at the idea of taking a weekend off, but they'd more than earned this and Lily was determined to give it to them.

'We can take a minute to breathe,' she said, glancing around at everyone. 'We need to breathe and get a bit of distance or we're going to end up in over our heads. Let's take the weekend and then, when we come back, we can think about what our next steps might start to look like.'

Arthur nodded and stepped forward to retrieve his travelling cloak off the stand in the corner of James' office. 'Alright,' he said, glancing back at them as he slid his cloak on. 'I'll get you that report on Monday and pull together some figures for the meeting next Friday.'

Lily nodded. 'Brilliant. Does that work for everyone?'

She glanced around at everyone else who was either nodding enthusiastically (James and, though less enthusiastically, Amelia) or else looking grimly accepting (Moody), and Lily clapped her hands together. 'Perfect. Have a good evening everyone.'

Everyone resumed chatting as they gathered their cloaks and queued for the fireplace. Arthur shook everyone's hands and was gone first, then Amelia, then Moody, and Lily was just fastening her cloak tighter around her when James spoke.

'Uh, hey, Evans?' He reached out and touched a hand to her elbow and Lily froze.

She turned slowly and was surprised at how close they were standing. James, too, must've been a bit surprised, because she heard him suck in a soft breath.

'Do you, uh,' he reached up and brushed his hair back off his forehead. 'Could we talk? A bit? Maybe?' Each word fell out of him in an exhale, like he was nervous, maybe, but she wasn't sure what he had to be nervous about.

She nodded and, without stepping back, Lily started to unfasten her travelling cloak. James' eyes flicked down to her hands and Lily's fingers immediately fumbled the button she was working on. She breathed a laugh and, though James hadn't looked up, she could see the smile plainly on his face.

It took her a moment to get the buttons undone — embarrassing because there was only three of them — and she reached up to slide the cloak off her shoulders. James reached out as she gathered the fabric in her hands, intending to hang it, and she raised an eyebrow at him.

'I'll hang it for you,' he said.

'I got it.' She took one step back and turned. She probably should've taken another step back because now she really had to reach, but —

She just looped the neck onto one of the hooks and she turned back to James with a smile. He was watching her with a gently amused expression on his face and there was something about it — the softness of the way he was looking at her, maybe, the warmth of it — that went straight to her head.

She took a breath.

'Did you want to talk here?' James was already starting to nod, but she continued. 'Or, I mean, we could go to your part of the house. I've never seen it and —'

James' eyes widened just a touch — so slightly that she wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't been watching him — before he cleared his throat. 'I — yeah. I mean, if, you know, you're sure.'

And she felt it, the potential, there. In _sure_. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, though it hadn't been top of mind when she'd asked it, what would happen if they went upstairs. She knew and she could already feel the anticipation building in her stomach though she was determined to at least hold it together for a few more minutes.

She nodded. 'I'm sure.'

James took her hand without another moment's hesitation, his fingers threading easily through hers, and led her through the silent corridors, past the administrative offices and the meeting spaces, towards the stairs that led to his home.

She'd never thought much about the inside of Number 10, had never really wondered what it looked like. She'd been off at Hogwarts by the time the standard school trip to the Prime Minister's quarters had gone off, and she'd been so swept up in her new world that she hadn't really thought much about the things that she was leaving behind.

So it wasn't much surprise to her that, as they walked, the things that stood out to her weren't the portraits of former PMs or the general stateliness of it all. What stood out to her the most were the things she noticed once they finished climbing the stairs, the things that made it _James' house _instead of _Number 10 Downing Street. _

How the light, once James flipped on the lamps, seemed warmer up in this part of the house. How _lived in _the whole place looked. The furniture was posh, a bit stiff looking, but there were touches throughout that saved it from looking cold and impersonal. There was a slipper under the coffee table — just the one — and a laptop charging cord curled up on top. There was a blanket thrown haphazardly over the arm of the sofa, a book and a different pair of glasses set on the side table. There was a mug there, too, but James cleared his throat awkwardly and scooped it up the moment he noticed it.

'I — the housekeeper, I — I told her they needn't come up here, I'm a grown man and I can clean up after myself.'

'Clearly.' She smirked at him, though it was softer than it normally would have been because his nerves were just so endearing.

James breathed a laugh. 'I'll just go pop this in the kitchen. Feel free to have a look around. Make yourself at home.'

Lily nodded and watched as he turned and strode off down the corridor towards, presumably, the kitchen. She'd just started across the room towards the bookshelves on the far wall when she heard James call her name.

She turned, raised an eyebrow at him. 'What? Can I not look at these?'

James laughed, shook his head. 'No, look at whatever you want. I just wanted to know if you wanted anything. Tea, water?'

She smiled softly and gave a small shake of the head. 'No, thank you.'

James nodded, and she expected him to turn immediately and go, but he stood there for a moment and studied her. She could feel his gaze raking slowly over her and she was suddenly very aware of everywhere her clothes were touching her skin.

After a moment, James cleared his throat, rapped lightly on the doorframe with his free hand, and walked back towards the kitchen.

She busied herself with his bookshelf.

She wasn't sure what she expected — government papers, maybe, or books about foreign affairs or economics or history. Maybe biographies of famous historical figures. She knew he had those things downstairs in his office, but, knowing James as she did, she wouldn't have been surprised if these shelves, too, were practical things.

They were actually, though, full of novels.

'Huh.' She smiled to herself and started running her index finger along the spines. There were books she knew — _Middlemarch _and _David Copperfield _and _Pride and Prejudice_ — and a few that sounded familiar, but there were titles she didn't know, too. There were a _lot _of titles that she didn't know. They must have been books that had come out fairly recently, or at least since she'd graduated from Hogwarts, because once she'd graduated and gotten that flat in Diagon Alley, she hadn't really spent much time in the Muggle world. She'd heard a few things as time had passed — about the war, the referendum a few years ago — but she hadn't monitored the changes in the way that she might've done if she'd been interested in maintaining some kind of connection to it all.

She didn't have a television in her house. Didn't have a mobile phone. Didn't have a computer. She had no way of keeping in touch with what was happening in the world just outside her door.

She hadn't really realised how much she was missing it until now.

She selected a few titles off the shelves — _The Satanic Verses, Home Fire, _and, this one in particular had really caught her eye, _Circe _— and sat on the edge of the sofa, flipped them over, and read the backs in turn. They were mostly quotes from other authors singing the book's praises, but she eventually found the summaries — on the inside flap of the front cover — and she skimmed through them to get some idea of the worlds she held in her hands.

She was a page and a half into _Circe _before she felt James' eyes on her and she looked up.

He was leaning up against the doorframe to the kitchen — his shoulder was pressed against the wood, his jacket was lifted just a bit at the side where he'd stuck his hand in his pocket, and his feet were crossed at the ankles.

She let the book fall closed on her thumb. 'Can I help you?'

James laughed quietly. 'No.'

Lily slid her thumb out from between the pages and let the book fall closed. 'Then why are you looking at me?'

'I just like looking at you.'

Lily held his gaze for a long moment before she pulled her eyes from his and dragged them slowly over the long lines of his body. Neither of them moved, but Lily could feel the anticipation starting to wind itself tighter in her gut.

She picked up the other books from beside her. Set them in her lap.

She watched James watching her.

Lily stood silently and James pushed up off the doorframe. She held his gaze for a moment before she turned and crossed the sitting room to the bookcase.

The room was completely quiet for a minute — Lily slid _Home Fire _back onto the shelf and began looking for the proper places for the others — before James started walking across the room towards her. She could hear the soft tap of James' shoes against the hardwood as he approached, but Lily didn't turn around. She just scanned the shelves for the spots she needed to return the books and listened as James closed the distance between them.

Though, admittedly, she wasn't doing the best job figuring out where these books were supposed to go. She was far too interested in James' quiet footfalls, in the way that the tension in her gut wound itself tighter and tighter as he approached. She'd just slid _The Satanic Verses _back on the shelf when she felt James settle in behind her.

He hadn't touched her, wasn't standing too close, but still, she could feel the heat of him against her back.

She spotted the space she was looking for and stepped sideways to slide _Circe_ back onto the shelf. She had just lifted her arm to shelve the book when she felt James' hand at her waist. It was just the brush of his fingers at first, so light she barely felt it through her blazer, but then his hand curved around her waist, his fingertips pressing into the fabric of her shirt —

She sucked in a sharp breath and she felt James' fingers twitch against her.

'Is this alright?' He pressed his fingertips lightly into her hip and Lily pulled in a breath as she slid the book into the space on the shelf and turned. James' hand slid across her stomach, across her opposite hip — it didn't escape her notice that it slid under her blazer this time.

'Yeah,' she said, and she knew that she sounded a little breathless but she didn't much care at the moment. 'Yeah, that's alright.'

He held her gaze, a small smile lifting the left corner of his mouth, and moved his free hand up to her jaw. His eyes traced her features as his fingers slid across her skin, curving over her jaw, curling around the back of her neck, and tangling in her hair. He brushed his thumb along the apple of her cheek.

'Alright?' His voice was low and rough and it gritted against her skin.

She had half a mind to just step into him, to kiss him, but there was something about him just now. There was something about the air of him — a restraint, maybe, or a depth.

She wasn't sure what it was. She just knew that it tugged heavily in her gut and made her keen to see how he ran this.

She nodded slowly and hummed, the sound low in her throat. James tilted her head back a bit and slid an inch closer, stepping them forward so her shoulders were pressed back against the bookshelf, and there was something about that new closeness, that additional inch, and the solidity of the shelf at her back — it sparked a live wire under her skin and the space between them hummed with electricity.

'I thought we were going to talk,' she said, her tone lightly teasing.

James hummed and leaned down so she could feel his breath on the side of her neck. He hovered just above her skin as he spoke so she could feel the light brush of his lips against her neck. 'We are talking.'

'Are we?' She tried turned to look at him but James pressed his thumb against her jaw and gently held her in place.

She exhaled sharply and she didn't even have to see him to know he was smiling when he spoke again.

'So, as I was saying,' he exhaled, his breath heavy against her skin, and pressed his lips, once, to her pulse point before he recovered his false train of thought. 'This weather, eh?'

Lily groaned and arched forward in an attempt to close the distance between them, but James tightened his hand on her waist and held her still.

She huffed, 'James,' and he chuckled, the sound low in his chest, and pressed another kiss to the side of her neck, lingering a bit longer this time.

She threaded her fingers through the hair at the base of his neck and lifted one of her feet up, wrapped it around his calf and pressed him forward. She expected him to resist her, to take her leg and put it back on the floor, but some part of his control must have slipped because he let her pull him until he was pressed against her and the thrill that shot through her then —

James pressed a kiss to her neck, her jaw, the corner of her lips.

— she was going to remember this feeling for the rest of her life.

She turned her head just slightly and kissed him.

And that, _that, _seemed to make everything just that much more intense, to the point where she felt like she couldn't breathe, like she couldn't get herself close enough, like she couldn't have enough of him. Because it should have been, maybe, a relief, kissing him, but instead of serving as an outlet, a way for her to drain off the tension that was building in her gut, kissing him —

It was like a conductor more than anything else. Letting the electricity slide through them, letting them channel it, and maybe that was supposed to ease some of the tension but giving it space —

It only intensified the feeling in her chest. Only made her that much more desperate.

She pushed up off the bookcase and James tightened his grip on her as he stumbled a bit over his feet. She laughed, breaking the kiss, and James moved his lips to her neck.

'What's so funny, Evans?'

'You,' she said, tipping her head back so she could look at him. 'Tripping over your massive feet.'

He just grinned and grasped her hips a bit more tightly as he walked them out of the lounge and into the corridor. Lily raised an eyebrow at him. 'Not going to make a joke about "big feet, you know what else is big"?'

James laughed and shook his head. 'Seems beneath me, if I'm honest.'

Lily laughed and pushed his shoulder so James took a few steps back. 'You're obnoxious.'

James just grinned and caught her around the waist again, wrapping his arms around her and moulding her to him. 'Yeah. But you find it charming, so…'

She quirked an eyebrow. 'Do I, now?'

James nodded and leaned down to kiss her jaw, her neck, that spot just underneath her ear. 'Mmm,' he hummed noncommittally and grazed his teeth lightly against her earlobe and, when she shivered, she felt him smile against her skin. 'Moderately charming, at least.'

Lily slid her blazer off her shoulders, and threw it onto the floor. The fabric made a surprisingly loud sound when it hit the floor and Lily had a moment — her _wand _was in there — where she was going to grab the jacket and bring it with them, but then James' hands were on her jaw and he was kissing her again and —

Well, she forgot entirely about her wand.

They took a few more stumbling steps back towards a door that, Lily assumed, led to James' bedroom, and Lily tugged her shirt out of her trousers, pulling away just far enough to whip it over her head. She looked back up at James as her shirt fell to the floor — his gaze was skirting her body, tracing the lines of her that, before now, he hadn't seen. He stepped back into her again and put his hands on her hips, spreading his fingers wide as he trailed his hands slowly up her sides.

'Evans...' His eyes caught hers as he brushed his hands over the sides of her breasts. 'You're so beautiful.'

He ran hand over her shoulder, her neck, before tangling his fingers in her hair again. He brushed his thumb along the side of her jaw and it was overwhelming the way he was looking at her just then, his eyes dark and intense and heavy, but with an equally fierce warmth, a softness, lingering around the edges and —

There was something immense about the way he was looking at her.

And then he leant forward and kissed her again, softer than before, his lips moving slowly over hers and he brushed his fingers lightly against her skin. And it was those few places — his thumb on her jaw, his fingers pressing into the back of her neck, his hand on her back teasing her bra clasp, his mouth on hers — where she felt the energy between them, the potential. Because his restraint was clear — in the way he brushed his thumb against her bra but didn't bother trying to undo it and the fact that he was kissing her softly, so slowly that each brush of his lips against hers felt like it lasted hours — and the patient side of her was keen to indulge this side of him, the part that wanted to savour this moment, savour her, but the rest of her —

The rest of her was anxious to get her hands on him already.

She pulled her lips from his and James immediately moved to kiss her jaw again.

She tipped her head back to give him better access and smiled at the ceiling. 'James?'

He hummed against her neck and she sighed at the vibration against her skin.

'James, this door better lead to your bedroom.'

He chuckled and dropped another kiss to her pulse point. 'Oh, yeah?'

She nodded and stepped them backwards — she moved a bit more forcefully than she'd intended, though, and James laughed into her neck as he threw his hand up to catch himself against the wall.

'You trying to kill me, Evans?'

She smirked at him when he picked his head up to look at her, and though she had a reply on the tip of her tongue — _not yet _— it fell away as James kissed her again and nudged open the door behind them to reveal — thank _god_ — his bedroom.

She must have said something to that effect out loud, because James laughed against her lips as he walked them back through his door.

He nudged his door closed with his foot.

She slid her hands up to the neck of his shirt and immediately began teasing open the buttons.

'Evans.' James swallowed hard as Lily's fingers tripped over another button. 'You —' she pressed another kiss to his throat, his collarbone, the bits of his chest that, until now, had been hidden behind his shirt.

'You want this?' he said. He looked down at her and Lily tipped her head back to meet his eyes. 'You're sure?'

Lily popped open the final button on his shirt and spread her hands out over his stomach, sliding her hands up his chest before curling one hand behind his neck and stepping into him.

'Yes, James,' she leant up and kissed his throat. 'I absolutely want this.'

And, as though proving her point, she reached back to undo her bra and let it fall to the floor.

The rest of their clothes — trousers, pants, shoes — fell off in quick succession as they made their way across the room to James' bed. Lily finished kicking her trousers off — these damn skinny trousers were such a pain in the _arse _to get off sometimes — as she sat back onto the bed and slid across the duvet towards the pillows.

James laughed at her urgency and climbed up over the side of the bed. 'You think rocketing up there is going to make me move any faster?'

She just tugged him towards her and kissed him again.

And for all of James' talk about how he wasn't going to move any faster, he certainly didn't waste his time as they fell back onto the bed. His hands moved, immediately, in long, smooth lines over her skin — he brushed his hand over the curve of her breast, the dip of her waist, trailed his fingers in between her thighs —

He brushed his fingers against her and Lily arched up off the bed as she moaned against his lips.

'_Fuck,_' James pressed his forehead against hers and ran his fingers up the length of her again. She moaned again, a bit louder this time, and wound her fingers through his hair.

'Lily, fuck,' James kissed her again before he pulled back a bit to watch his hand between her thighs.

And his fingers — _fuck _— the way he took his time to tease out what, exactly, she liked —

His fingers were great — stunning — but _god, _it just wasn't enough.

'James —' he brushed his fingers against her again and she pressed her head back into the pillow with a moan. 'James, will you go down on me?'

He groaned quietly and, when she looked up at him, he was beaming.

'I was just,' he kissed her quickly, 'getting ready to ask.' He kissed her again, this one lingering a bit longer, before he slid down and settled between her thighs.

Lily could feel his breath against her as he laid one forearm across her hips, felt the tension tie itself tighter in her gut as he pressed one palm against her thigh and opened her legs just that much wider — the anticipation had drawn the threads in her stomach so tight that she could barely breathe for wanting.

And then James ran his tongue over her and _fucking hell _she nearly came undone.

And if his fingers alone had nearly ruined her — this, _this _was absolutely going to do the job. The feel of his mouth against her and the way he swirled his tongue just right and learnt what she liked and drove her right to the edge and held her there and —

And then he curled a finger, two, inside her, and Lily's hips nearly shot up off the bed. He chuckled, his mouth vibrating against her, as he pressed her hips back into the bed. He moved back just a bit to drop a few light kisses to the inside of her thigh and Lily groaned at the loss of contact.

She felt him smile against her skin before he moved to put his mouth on her again and if he'd been about to kill her before, he was _really _going to kill her now.

Because now, _now, _with his fingers curled inside her and his mouth moving just the way she liked, she stood no chance. It was barely a few flicks of his tongue before she was twisting her fingers in his hair, a few more and he was pressing her back into the bed, a few more and then the tension, finally, snapped.

James slowed as she came down before he pulled back and dropped a kiss to her thigh, hip, stomach, between her breasts. She tugged him down as his lips found hers and James groaned against her lips as their hips knocked together.

There was a new urgency to this kiss now, a new heat, and Lily could feel herself already starting to wind up again as James ran his hands over her, his hands lingering a little longer on the places that made her gasp and press herself more tightly to him.

After a few minutes, Lily pulled away, her breath coming in waves. 'Have you got — _fuck _— I could go get —'

James shook his head and kissed her jaw, neck, collarbone as he pulled away. 'I've got — a drawer.'

She raised an eyebrow at him, her amusement dimming — barely — her anticipation for a moment. 'A whole drawer, eh?'

James rolled his eyes at her as he leant over and pulled a condom out of a drawer that, good god, was genuinely packed to bursting. 'Ha ha. It's Sirius' idea of a joke.'

'What? Basically turning your bedside table into a chemist's?'

He snorted and Lily's smile widened. 'Yes,' he tore open the wrapper and tossed it onto the bedside table. 'Sirius likes to joke that I need "supplies" for when I "seduce people with my sexy new office" and he brings me a box whenever he remembers.'

Lily laughed. 'Oh, so is that what's happened here? You've seduced me with your office?'

James leant forward, catching his weight on his hands on either side of her head. He pressed his forehead to hers, a soft smile on his lips.

'I'm pretty sure I was the one being seduced by your office.'

Lily hummed and wrapped one of her legs around the back of his thighs. 'You like a powerful woman, eh?'

He reached one hand between them and, as he pushed into her, he groaned and pressed a firm kiss to her lips. 'Absolutely.'

He set a slow, steady pace at first, his forehead hovering just above hers, his gaze continually flicking between her face, their hips, and back again. Each thrust drew the threads in her stomach tighter and between that and the look on his face —

He was looking at her like she was the absolute centre of the universe. Like nothing else in the entire world existed apart from the two of them. And it was possible that she was making that up, the way he was looking at her, possible that she was reading something into him that she, herself, so desperately wanted to see, but she'd spent her whole life, her whole career, taking things for what they were, observing things in exact detail and interpreting them based on the available evidence, and there was an earnestness to James' expression now, a depth and a heat and a realness to it that she couldn't be making up.

She was so glad that she wasn't making it up.

Because, deep down — hidden underneath her walls and layers and layers and _layers _of work — deep down, the rush she felt when she looked at him — _whenever_ she looked at him, now, with him hovering over her, in his office, in the conference room across the table, _whenever _she looked at him — was overwhelming. It was deep and real and massive and terrifying and she wasn't used to that, to this level of feeling, to this sort of immensity, and the feelings that welled up in her chest then —

They were completely unexpected. They shouldn't have been because they'd been lingering in the back of her mind for weeks — _months _— but she'd been refusing to acknowledge them because it just — it wasn't the right time, and so letting herself feel them now? Really feel them?

Holy shit.

She thought that her brief shock at her own mental state might have gone unnoticed, but, before she'd really realised it, James had pulled away, his brow furrowed. He slid one of his hands up from her waist and cupped her jaw, his thumb brushing along the apple of her cheek.

'You okay?'

She nodded. 'Yeah. Yeah, I'm just —' She turned her head and kissed his palm. 'I'm just thinking. It's good stuff, though, don't worry.'

James' brow was still creased. 'You sure?'

Lily nodded again and moved to thread her hands in his hair again. She brought his forehead to hers and leaned up to kiss him. She kissed him once, twice, before she spoke against his lips. 'Absolutely.'

They both smiled at her blatant echo of James' earlier words. James brushed his thumb along her cheek once more before he slid forward again and they both groaned. And though it wasn't long before they were both breathing heavily again, there was a new depth between them now, a new weight to the way James was looking at her.

James bumped his nose against hers and Lily couldn't help the silly smile that absolutely took over her face. 'Talk to me,' he said, leaning forward and pressing his forehead against hers again. 'What're you thinking about?'

Lily groaned softly as he moved — he'd set a slow, almost relaxed pace now, and it was — she could feel _everything_ and it was —

James leaned down to kiss her jaw, her neck, and Lily took a deep breath.

'I was thinking about you,' she said. She thought he might move up to look at her, but he didn't move. He just pressed another kiss to her neck, scraping his teeth lightly against her skin.

'You — you're so good and I just —'

James picked his head up then and smirked at her. 'Good? At what?' He thrust forward again, a bit harder this time, and Lily moaned.

'I didn't mean this — I mean, obviously this, you're amazing at this, but I didn't mean —' She moaned again.

'So what did you mean?'

'I meant in general,' she inhaled sharply as he hit a new spot inside her. 'You're good and lovely and kind and I — James, I —' He hit that spot again and fucking _hell _she needed to just —

Lily lifted her legs higher and wrapped them around his waist and when he hit that spot again —

She moaned into his chest, her hands gripping tightly at his back, and James leant down to speak into her ear.

'There?' He moved again, even more slowly than before, and Lily moaned, 'Mmhmm,' into his neck.

He held that pace for a few minutes, the slow and steady pace building the tension in her gut until she could barely breathe through it. She was close, she was so _fucking _close, and she just — she needed —

She must have been muttering something to that effect under her breath because James suddenly shifted so that he was sitting a back on his heels and took her hips in his hands. And the change in angle — _fuck _— it nudged just the right switch inside of her. She scrambled her hands on the sheets, desperate for something to hold onto, to ground her, but James' pace was quick and steady now, relentless, and she couldn't brace herself quickly enough.

Every ounce of control she recovered went immediately out the window with the next thrust.

And James knew it, too, he knew that she was right near the edge, probably because she kept babbling about it, and he moved one hand between them and brushed his fingers against her and — that, that alone, nearly snapped the tension immediately.

She twisted her fingers in the sheets and moaned again and the look in James' eyes as he watched her was going to ruin her, it was absolutely going to ruin her, and all she could think, over and over again, as he moved was that she wanted to do this every day for the rest of her life. Every goddamn day she wanted this man and this bed and this feeling and —

It was a deep, even thrust like any of the others, but it finally, _finally, _catapulted Lily over the edge. She twisted one hand in the sheets and her other hand shot forward, her fingers curling around one of his forearms, as she swore. James grinned at her for a moment before he moved once, twice more and he broke.

He held her hips firmly in his hands and, when he stopped shaking, he let his eyes fall closed for a moment as he stilled and slowly relaxed his grip on her. When he opened his eyes, he smiled brightly at her, warmly, but there was also the slightest bit of vulnerability there.

Lily slid her hand forward and threaded her fingers through his, and James' smile grew.

He leant down and pressed a long, lingering kiss to her lips before he muttered, 'I'll be back,' against her lips and climbed off the side of the bed. She rolled over onto her side to watch him go — James turned to look at her when he reached the door opposite the bed that, presumably, lead to the en suite and caught her staring, but she wasn't even remotely ashamed — before she fell back onto the pillows and closed her eyes.

He was —

Jesus christ.

She heard the door creak open a minute later and she propped herself up onto her elbows. James smiled at her before he lifted his hand to flick off the light and Lily sat bolt upright. 'Ah! No, I've got to go.'

James left the light on, kissing her quickly as he passed her on the way back to bed. She smiled against his lips as his hands caught her waist before she slipped away and stepped into the bathroom. She made quick work of what she had to do — she was anxious, already, to get back in bed, a little giddy, and she knew it was silly, but she didn't much care — just peed, washed her face, and tried her best to scrub off the remnants of her mascara that, honestly, didn't want to budge. She only managed to smudge it even more underneath her eyes — even after she used the face wash James had in his shower — and she decided to give it up as a bad job.

Maybe it was fine. Maybe it gave her a smokey, rocker-chick sort of vibe.

It probably didn't, but she wasn't going to rub her damn face raw trying to get it off right now. She folded the flannel she'd used mindlessly in her hands as she looked for — ah, she spotted the washing basket in the corner and tossed it inside — before she opened the bathroom room and looked back out into the bedroom.

James had pulled down the blankets while she'd been in the bathroom and, when he noticed her in the doorway, he patted the empty space on the bed beside him. Lily flicked off the bathroom light and, though there were a few lights shining through the window from the city outside, she couldn't see a damn thing. They both laughed as she fumbled through the dark — first she caught her foot on one of their pairs of trousers and then she nearly tripped and killed herself on one of their shoes — but she managed to get into the bed without seriously injuring herself in the end.

She climbed under the blankets — James' hands immediately found her in the dark — and slid across the bed until she was pressed right up against his side. James turned on his side and pressed a featherlight kiss to the end of her nose. They were quiet for a few minutes, James tracing his hand along a slow path from the top of her thigh to the nape of her neck, and Lily let her eyes fall closed.

She loved the feel of his hands on her skin. She loved the warmth of his body pressed against hers, loved how they fitted together.

She —

'You're good, too, you know,' James said into the darkness. Her eyes had adjusted now so when she looked up, she could just make out his features. James wrapped his arm solidly around her waist and pulled her even tighter against him.

'You're good and lovely and kind,' he smiled at her and it was so radiant, so earnest that Lily thought her heart might explode. 'And I am just… in _awe _of you.' He slid his hand up and cupped her jaw. 'You are —' he laughed a little self-consciously. 'I don't think I even have words for it, actually.'

She grinned and he must have felt her cheek curve against his hand because he smiled back. She leant forward and kissed him softly, once, twice, before she pulled away and tucked her head underneath his chin.

'I know,' she said, pressing a kiss to his neck. 'I know exactly what you mean.'

* * *

**I could've cut this in half but I just couldn't bring myself**

**See you tomorrow with another chapter :)**


	13. Chapter 13

**Happy Sunday, friends! I hope you all have an absolutely lovely week. I'll see you next Saturday x**

* * *

When Lily woke a few hours later, the sun was just starting to peek up over the horizon. There wasn't anything in particular that woke her — just her body's annoyingly insistent desire to wake her up before dawn even though she, for once, didn't actually need to be awake — but, once she opened her eyes, she wasn't too upset about the fact that she was awake.

James was on his stomach beside her, his face turned towards her and his arm wrapped around her waist — she normally hated having things touching her while she was sleeping, but there was something about the weight of his arm there that was satisfying. It was comforting, knowing that he'd been there all night, that he'd wanted to stay connected to her even while they'd slept.

There was something so soft about him, looking at him now, something that wasn't there when she saw him during his waking hours. She was used to the bags under his eyes, the hard line of his jaw that was always covered in dark stubble, and while those things were still there, there was something easier about him now that he was sleeping, a kind of peace that she didn't often see on his face when he was awake.

Though, she supposed, there were a few times she could think of where he'd looked something like this. Last night, certainly, but a few other times before that.

When he handed her a cup of tea he'd made. When she was telling him about quidditch and she got overly excited. When she told him about her friends.

Sometimes he looked at her and he looked something like this — soft. Peaceful. Content. Like their responsibilities had suddenly vanished from their shoulders and it was just the two of them. Just the two of them in the whole bloody world and nothing else.

But really, now that she was thinking about it, there had always been something different about the way he'd looked at her. The look on his face in that _moment _before she stepped out of the grate in his office threw the way he looked at her into sharp relief — that James was tired and tense and buried in work and chronically worried that he was in over his head even though Lily knew that he was utterly brilliant. He carried everything, absolutely everything, on his shoulders — the concerns of the people he was governing — those who trusted him and those who didn't — and their hopes for the future. He worried about the things he didn't see coming, the things he couldn't see coming, and he thought, every day, about what else he could do to make his country, their country, even just a little bit better.

It was something she'd admired in him right from the start, this dedication, but she couldn't deny (though she knew that he probably would if she asked him) the weight that it was levelling on him.

When she thought about it now, she realised that he was always softening when it came to her. He was always relaxing, smoothing out when she was around.

She supposed that she was doing something very similar with him, too.

She liked to think, and maybe it was wishful thinking, that just her being near made some of that weight just a little bit easier to heft.

And, god, just now he looked absolutely adorable. His hair — she smiled and moved her hand to brush it off his forehead before she remembered herself — was just as chaotic as ever, and she could already tell from the way that it was mashed against the pillow that he was going to have a particularly hilarious horn on the side of his head when he finally woke. The duvet was low around his waist and, she could just see it if she lifted her head, one of his legs was dangling completely over the side of the bed.

She really should've expected that he would be one of those people that completely kicks off the blankets, but she felt a rush of satisfaction at learning something new about him.

She felt like she got so little of him, seeing one another as infrequently as they did, and she catalogued what she could of their time together, kept it in the back of her mind.

It sounded a bit mad, thinking about it like that, but it was what helped her through those weeks when she wasn't able to get out of the Ministry long enough to come see him.

She would have been content to lie there for the rest of the morning, to snuggle in a bit closer and try to fall back asleep, but her body, as it always did, had other plans. Her stomach gave a soft warning rumble and Lily knew that she didn't really have any choice but to drag herself out of bed. She slid carefully out from under James' arm and, even though she knew he'd probably shake it off, she tucked the duvet back around him so he didn't catch a chill. She turned and bit her lip as she surveyed the clothes scattered across the floor from the night before.

It looked like a bloody tornado had been through.

She bent down and grabbed James' shirt from where they'd thrown it the night before and slipped it over her shoulders. She buttoned a few of the centre buttons as she walked quietly across the room, scanning the floor for her blazer. She finally spotted it out in the corridor — she had to bite her lip again to keep from laughing because, really, they'd made _such _a mess — and she pushed the door open just a bit wider so that she could squeeze through.

The door squeaked a bit as she opened it and she whipped around to check that James was still sleeping. And then she stepped out into the corridor and the first floorboard she pressed her weight on gave a loud groan. Lily pressed her eyes closed and swore under her breath, but, when she looked over her shoulder, James still hadn't moved.

She grabbed her blazer from the floor and pulled her wand from the interior pocket. She folded her blazer over her arm and twirled the wand mindlessly in her fingers as she started down the corridor towards the kitchen.

She laid her blazer over the back of one of the kitchen chairs and dropped her wand on the table before she crossed over to grab the kettle off the base. She filled it in silence before she started ambling around James' kitchen, opening cupboards in an attempt to find mugs.

And maybe she'd grab a piece of bread out of the bread box because she quite fancied a bit of toast.

When her tea was finally steeped, Lily took her mug and her now half-eaten piece of toast and moved to stand in front of the massive window beside the small kitchen table.

The sun was a bit higher in the sky now. It was still barely dawn, though, and everything looked soft in this light. Warm.

She took a long sip of tea.

For all the positivity that she'd spouted at the meeting the night before — _we've had some victories _and _let's celebrate _and all that — there was still a deep, nagging feeling in her gut that something — she wasn't sure what — was waiting for them just over the horizon.

There was no point skirting around it — it was, very likely, a reality of the situation they were in.

It felt like that was _always_ the reality of the situation she was in.

And she knew there were a million more things to do — the fact that she'd woken up this morning and thought first, not about some report from last week or some crisis that had happened overnight or a question they had to ask someone in custody, but about _James_ —

The fact, even more significantly, that she hadn't spent any time this morning berating herself for that...

There were a million more things to do, and yes, part of her felt overwhelmingly guilty for even giving space to this right now, but James...

There were a lot of practical reasons to like him. To hold this space for him. He understood the pressure of this sort of role and he never once, and never would, she thought, make her feel guilty for choosing her work, would never ask her to look back at her life, at _all the years she's wasted in her underground office_ and tell her to _think, really think, about the choices she's made_.

He'd never ask her to do it because he'd done it. He understood the choice, the dedication it took to get to the place to be able to make a difference and he understood that making those choices often — no, always — came with sacrifices and it was nice, being with someone for once who understood that.

Not that she was James were necessarily _together _but still. It was nice to know that he probably wouldn't berate her in the middle of a restaurant for having to leave early because something came up and he'd understand that sometimes she had to read reports over dinner and he'd know that when her office door was closed, it meant he _should not fucking come in just then, _but she knew that work life balance was important, too, and she'd probably be a lot more open to it coming from someone who understood all the things that come with that illusion of balance.

And, anyway, her feelings about the whole thing might be a little different now because James was someone she was willing to happily put her reports to the side for.

But, more than those practical things, because she was always thinking of the practical things, James was just —

He was _bright. _He was warm and funny and just — he was easy. These was an ease about him — his quick smile, full laugh, his ridiculous hair, his way of approaching life and work and difficulty. He had his own complicated relationship with work and responsibility, she knew he did and she knew he was just as stressed as she was, but even when he was struggling, even when things were hard, it seemed like he was driven by this… this deep belief. In himself, in people, in the process, whatever. He had faith — not blind faith, but a faith all the same — and it changed the way he thought about everything.

And she'd never met anyone like him before. He sparked something inside her, an undeniable, addicting sort of interest, and she just —

She wanted him around.

She relaxed around him. He made her loosen her own grip on her schedule, her reactions, her expression, her work ethic, and she couldn't put her finger on how, exactly, he was doing it, but there was something about him that made it feel like the weight on her shoulders eased a bit, just enough so she could breathe.

And so, _yes, _there were a million things to do, but James was making her want to find a better way to do them. A way where she wasn't sleeping in her office three nights a week and living on tea and shovelling in just enough food to fuel her for her next massive grind.

He made her want to find a way where she made it home every evening. Where they ate a proper dinner, or, alright, maybe they had cereal or beans on toast or pot noodle sometimes, but they sat on the sofa and they ate together and they talked about their days —

Lily took another long sip of tea.

She'd been standing there awhile — her toast was now just crumbs on her, James', shirt and her tea was nearly finished — when she heard footsteps in the corridor behind her, and Lily turned her head just slightly to check that it was, indeed, James coming into the kitchen and not one of his poor staff. He was yawning when she snuck a glance — and, she noticed, he'd only bothered to pull on a pair of trunks — so she turned back towards the window before he opened his eyes and caught her looking.

He might've suspected that she knew he was there, though, because she didn't jump when he put a hand on her hip.

James brushed her hair away from her neck and shifted the fabric of his shirt to expose her shoulder. He dropped a featherlight kiss there, and Lily hummed and leant back into him. James' hand slid from her hip to the top of her thigh.

He pressed a kiss to her neck. 'Good morning, love.'

Lily turned her head and kissed the underside of his jaw. 'Good morning.'

'You sleep well?' James wrapped his other arm around her waist and she nodded against his chest.

'Like a baby. Unfortunately, I'm not accustomed to getting a lot of sleep anymore. Hence.' She held up her tea and James laughed into her hair.

'I know what you mean. I don't feel like I've gotten more than six hours a night since I started this damn job.'

'Can I get you a cuppa?' Lily turned her head to look at him. 'I'll put the kettle on.'

James shook his head and dropped another kiss to her neck as he tightened his arm around her waist. 'I'm alright for now.'

They stood there for a few minutes, Lily quietly sipping at her tea and James running his fingers lightly over her skin. It was still early — the sun had just risen maybe an hour before — and so there were only a few people walking along the pavement outside. She could just hear the sound of the cars on the street and the birds sitting on the roof outside James' window, but, more than anything else, Lily was focused on James' soft breath in her ear, on the gentle pressure of his fingers and the brush of the fabric against her skin as he moved his hand along her hip.

It was so quiet here.

After awhile, James turned and kissed her neck again. 'You want to get dressed? Go get breakfast?' He curled his fingers around the outside of her thigh. 'We could have a proper date for once.'

'As lovely as that sounds,' she said, pressing her weight back into him, 'I really don't feel like leaving the house.'

'Hmm.' James pressed another kiss to the side of her neck. 'What do you want to do, then?'

She half shrugged and her shirt slipped a bit further off her shoulder. James moved to press a kiss there and she sighed.

'We could just go back to bed.'

James chuckled into her skin. 'You think?'

She turned her head so she could look at him. He was smirking at her, his chin resting on her shoulder, and she raised an eyebrow at him.

'Just to talk.'

His smile widened. 'Talk, eh?'

'Mhmm.'

He slid his hand over her hip, up underneath her shirt, trailed his fingers over the curve of her waist. 'What are we going to talk about?'

'Well, I hear that, uh,' James kissed her neck again and Lily lost her train of thought for a moment. She felt him smile — probably a smug, self-satisfied smile — against her neck and she cleared her throat. 'I hear that there's this baking show on telly everyone loves.'

James laughed and picked his head up to look at her. 'Bake Off?'

She nodded. 'Arthur told me it's quite the hit, apparently.'

'It —' James shook his head and pressed his hand into her hip so that she turned in his arms. He lifted her mug out of her hand — Lily raised her eyebrows at him — and drained the remaining dregs of her tea and pulled a face.

'Ugh, how do you drink it without sugar?'

'Better question,' Lily said, leaning with him as he bent sideways to set her mug on the edge of the counter, 'why do you ruin your tea by putting sugar in it?'

'Ohhh,' James took a few steps back, letting his hands fall from her waist. 'Those are fighting words, Evans.'

She cocked an eyebrow at followed him forward. 'Are they?'

He shook his head with mock-seriousness, the frown etched deeply into his face. 'I thought I _knew_ you.'

Lily's grin widened. 'Well, that was your first mistake, wasn't it?'

Their clothes — what little of them they were wearing — fell off rather quickly after that.

The sun was properly risen by the time they were finished. Lily was stretched out in a sunpatch on the bed, arms wide, a sheen of sweat across her brow, and a satisfied smile on her face when James got back from the bathroom. He flopped down onto the bed and gathered her up in his arms, pressing her back into his chest.

'You look like a cat,' he said, pressing a kiss to the nape of her neck, 'all stretched out in the sun like that.'

Lily turned her head to kiss him, but the angle was odd and she couldn't quite reach. Keen to avoid moving away if possible — and also keen to avoid knocking him round the nose with her elbow — she turned herself clumsily in his arms so she was facing him. She pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw once she was finally settled and James' arms tightened around her, his hands spreading out over her back.

'I feel like a cat,' she said, snuggling closer. 'All happy and warm and satisfied.'

She didn't even have to look at him to know he was smirking. 'Satisfied, eh?'

She hummed and kissed his throat. '_Very _satisfied.'

They laid there quietly for a while, her nose pressed against his neck, James' fingertips playing with the ends of her hair. And it was so peaceful here — in his arms, in his bed — and Lily couldn't think of a single place in the world that was better than this one.

Eventually, James shifted against her and he drew in a deep breath.

'So,' and Lily could tell, just from the tone of that first word, that this was going to be something. 'I've been wondering — and you don't have to talk about it, obviously,' James said, leaning back so he could look her in the eye. 'But I've been thinking about our conversation at Christmas.'

Lily frowned and tried to think back — and she racked her brain, but all she could remember from Christmas, honestly, was him.

The way he laughed at her stories. The bright, shiny look in his eyes when he told her about the things he and Sirius had gotten up to at school. The way he'd looked at her after he'd helped her put her cloak on.

And maybe he was thinking about those things, but the way he was asking this…. It made her think this was something else.

'What about it?'

'Well, it was nothing we really talked about at the time,' he said. He spread his hands out over her back again and brushed his thumb lightly back and forth over her shoulder blade. 'We were talking, you know, about how you're from a non-magical family and I just —'

He fell quiet for a beat, like he was waiting for Lily to fill the silence. When she didn't, he cleared his throat. 'I was wondering what that was like. And we don't have to talk about it,' James added hastily. 'Especially because I remember you saying it was difficult for you. I just — I. I want to know you. Which I think sounds like I'm trying to guilt you, but I'm not, I —'

She reached forward and rested her hand on his chest. James fell silent and Lily focused on the soft, steady thrumming of his heart under her hand while she tried to gather her thoughts.

'It's alright,' she said after a minute. 'I just haven't talked about it, really. Like, in years, actually. And I think Remus, Marlene, and Mary are really the only ones who know and, even with them, I'm sure there's things I haven't said just because I didn't know them when it happened or I didn't want to talk about it at the time or —'

She shook her head to clear it and James began moving his hands slowly over her back. And the action was just enough to remind her that he was there, just enough to keep her grounded, and so she took a deep breath.

'I didn't find out that I was magical until I was eleven. Professor McGonagall, our Transfiguration teacher and deputy headmistress, just showed up at my house that summer with a letter. She sat me and my parents down, explained that I was witch —' She breathed a laugh, now, remembering the looks on her parents faces. Her father's bald shock, her mother's more subdued but equally all-consuming surprise.

Her own secret thrill of excitement.

'I was always little odd,' she said, laughing again. 'I loved to make flowers bloom in my hands, I liked to jump off things because I always felt like I was floating to the ground instead of falling. I was a weird kid and, you know, I had friends, but — I was definitely weird. And so when I found out that I was _magical_ —' She exhaled, the smile stretching over her face at the memory.

'I just really wanted to be special, I think.' She chuckled. 'Not that I was necessarily a self-centred kid or anything, but, I mean I thought I was like a superhero or something. I thought I was _so cool. _And when we went to Diagon Alley the first time to buy my school things —' She could still see how it had all looked that first time. How bright the colours had been, how each and every window display had something new, something she'd never seen before. The adrenaline that had run through her that day was still so overwhelming, even to remember, and it was a miracle to her that she hadn't just exploded out of pure joy that afternoon.

'I was so excited. And every summer, I came home and my parents always had all these questions about what I'd learnt and what I'd done that year. And I loved writing to them when I was away because they were always so excited to hear about everything. But then —' She took a deep breath and let her eyes fall closed for a moment. 'In my fourth year, my parents died. In a car crash. And so every summer after that, I was home with my older sister. She never really liked magic, Petunia. She was — well, right at the beginning, when we first found out I was a witch, she wanted to go to Hogwarts. But when it became clear that she couldn't, she decided that the whole concept of magic was disgusting to her.'

Lily was quiet for a moment. Just focused on a soft, steady back and forth of James' fingertips against her ribs. She hadn't thought about this, about any of this, in ages, and she was surprised at the intensity of the feelings welling up in her chest.

She swallowed hard against them and carried on.

'She made my summers absolute hell. It was bad enough that I came home after a whole year of living in one world and found myself planted squarely in another, bad enough that, while my classmates could get away with doing magic, I was under even stricter watch because my family were Muggles and therefore couldn't be trusted. But then to have my sister take all my things every year and stuff them in the cupboard in the hall —

'She forced me to hide so much of myself. To pretend like it wasn't there.' Lily breathed a soft, bitter laugh and James pressed his hand into her hip. 'I think she told the neighbours that I went to some school for mad people. They always looked at me a bit funny after I went off to Hogwarts, never really talked to me much after that.'

James frowned. 'I can't believe that she would do that to you.'

Lily shrugged, shifted her leg forward and wound it between James', pulled herself closer to him. 'Our relationship broke the day I got on that train when I was eleven. When my parents were alive, you know, they mediated and filled the silence and drew us out a bit, but once they were gone…. It was what it was. There was no point fighting her on it. And honestly, I didn't really care what the neighbours back in Cokeworth thought of me because I couldn't wait to be shot of the place.'

'You preferred magic?'

'I — it's hard to explain. I've always been magical, right? Like it was always a part of me. I didn't just turn eleven and have someone dump magical powers on my head and get shipped off to wizard school. But I hadn't known that it was there, I hadn't had the chance to explore that part of myself, to really figure out what I was like _as a witch. _I knew who Muggle Lily was — she was a red-headed girl from a poor Northern town with an imagination too big for her own good that was always doing weird shit and freaking her classmates out. But Witch Lily… she was a mystery to me. And I wanted was the chance to get to know her, to really know what that part of myself was like. That was made a bit more complicated, obviously, by the fact that I was just starting school at the same time as the wizarding world was deciding that maybe they didn't want to have Muggleborn students at Hogwarts anymore.'

'What?' James propped himself up onto his elbow so that he could look at her and Lily smiled softly, brought her hand to his cheek, pulled his lips to hers.

It was brief, light, but he was worried and she didn't want him to fret about things that were three decades old. Didn't want him to fret about things they couldn't change.

James laid back down onto the pillow next to her, and though his features looked a bit more relaxed, his hand had tightened around her waist. She brushed her thumb along his cheekbone, moved her hand down his neck, his chest, rested it right above his heartbeat.

'Back then,' she said, 'when I was in school, it was… something of a movement. Hating Muggleborn people like me. No one really did anything too overt, you know, didn't hunt you down in the street or anything like that, not at first, anyway. It was just harder to get jobs, people sort of looked at you. Sometimes people would mutter behind your back if they knew.

'It seems like something that would be fairly easy to hide, being Muggleborn. Because it's not like there's any outward marker of who you are, nothing that really gives it away. It's not like the colour of my skin or my accent or something that I can't hide. But still, it found a way to follow me around. All the pureblood kids — the kids whose families were all magical as far back as they could remember — knew one another. They knew the big halfblood families. And the wizarding community… I mean, it's small. When you were new, people noticed. So just when I was getting ready to start school, there was some conversation about breaking Muggleborn students off into their own kind of sector, giving them a school _like _Hogwarts that wasn't _actually _Hogwarts. A way to make sure that Muggleborn kids didn't "accidentally hurt magical kids" or "accidentally tell their Muggle relations where the school was located". It was all cloaked in that kind of bullshit.'

'That's incredibly fucked up,' James said. Lily breathed a laugh.

'Yeah, it was. But I didn't know that any of that was happening, so I just went into it, the wizarding world, totally blind to the fact that people hated me because of who my parents were.'

Lily was quiet for a moment as she hovered on the edge of the rest of what she had to say. This part, despite the distance of time, still upset her on a fundamental level. Still made her heart clench and made her throat go dry.

She knew that she didn't have to tell him, that he wouldn't know if she left it out, but she was telling him about her, about her world, about her relationship to it. It wouldn't be right to leave this part out.

'But then, when I was in fifth year, some boy — we'd been friends, I guess, or classmates, I don't — he and his friends got together and hurt my friend, Mary. They grabbed her while we were walking in the hallway together and they knocked me out and — She was Muggleborn, too.'

James reached up and brushed his thumb underneath her eyes. She hadn't realised she was crying until his finger was wet against her cheek. She smiled her thanks, took a deep breath, and blinked back her tears.

'That was the first time I really realised that things were changing. For us. That what had been a quieter, subtler thing was going to start to dramatically change the way that I could live my life.

'Looking back, I realise just how radical a lot of what happened was, especially where I was concerned. Like, I knew at the time that being selected Head Girl was controversial, mostly because the board is made up of these old pureblood families, but I didn't really think about the wider significance of it at the time. I just wanted to do my job and do it well. Prove to the people that had voiced concerns about me that I was the best person for the job. I felt the same way when I got my first job at the Ministry — there were a few people in my department who thought that I might not have the _background _to be able to make reasonable legal judgments for the wider wizarding community. Moody really stuck his neck out to get me that job and it wasn't until years later, when I was working in his role, that he really told me the extent of everything that'd gone on.

'I was lucky that I had people who were willing to fight for me. And I know, now, that I worked really hard to make a lot of that happen, that I earned every single one of the opportunities I had. But it wouldn't have mattered how hard I'd worked if there hadn't been someone in a position of power who noticed and it wouldn't have mattered if they hadn't been willing to make a controversial decision and give me the chance to do what I could. Which is just — I mean, how fucked up is that? And I feel like I'm spending my life being grateful to people which, you know, _fine, _but I shouldn't have to be grateful for having been given a shot. I'd earned it.' She looked down at her hand, still resting lightly on his chest. 'I'd more than earned it.'

They were quiet for a minute, Lily focusing on the soft beat of James' heart under her hand, on the light brush of his hand over the curve of her hip.

'Anyway,' she cleared her throat and flicked her eyes back up to his, 'by the time I was ready to leave school, the anti-Muggle sentiment had sort of caught fire. To put it lightly. Those boys in my fifth year were following the word of this bloke who preached wizard rule over Muggles, talked about this idea of being in charge of them for the greater good of wizard kind. Muggleborns became a threat to that goal because we had an inside track to both sides of the fight — we could take what we knew from the wizarding world and arm our Muggle families and neighbours.' Lily laughed bitterly.

'It's incredibly stupid if you think about it for even, like, two seconds, but it's what everyone was convinced of. And the papers were full of all of these articles about how people could safeguard their magic from being drained away when they were in muggle spaces and all that sort of shit. I was just coming up through Auror training now and it was —' she laughed and tucked a piece of hair back behind her ear. 'It was hard as hell. I don't think I've ever been that tired in my entire life. _Still_.

'But the Aurors gave me a place where I felt like I was at home. Where I was able to do something _practical, _something tangible to make a difference. I wasn't just pissed off and ranting about it to my mates over drinks, I was getting up everyday and I was tracking these people down and I was putting them in prison and it felt _good_. And so I took on every extra project I could — anything to prove myself, anything to get into more circles, meet more people — I worked myself to the bone. I was dragging myself home every night to the tiny little flat I still live in, dead tired, barely able to move, but I went and did it again every day and it was all because I knew that, if I stopped, everything was probably going to fall apart underneath my hands. I didn't have a choice and so I just put my head down and did it.'

'Like a shark,' he said. He had a knowing look in his eyes, like he knew exactly what she was talking about, and her chest ached at the recognition. 'You stop swimming and you die.'

She nodded. 'Yeah,' she said. 'Exactly like that.'

He didn't say anything for a minute — he was probably waiting for her to continue, but she was tapped out. She felt better — she definitely felt better — but she was also just….

She was exhausted.

Some of these things had been buried for so long that even unearthing them was a struggle. And that didn't even count the effort it took to actually open her mouth and talk about them. To lay herself out like that, to let herself be vulnerable.

It went against everything she'd taught herself. Softening when she was usually just looking for new ways to make herself harder.

After a minute of silence, James cleared his throat.

'We're very similar, you and me,' he said. She looked up and he was smiling at her, but it was sad, maybe, a little resigned around the edges. She moved her hand from his chest and rested it on his neck, her thumb brushing over the hard line of his jaw.

'How so?'

'I had a lot of the same experiences growing up. It was different, you know — no one at school was trying to kill me — so — I mean, I feel weird even comparing them —'

Lily hummed and shook her head. 'No. It's just as valid.'

James exhaled hard. 'I just understand, I guess. Especially the identity stuff. Like what you were saying about figuring out the sides of yourself…. I felt that a lot. I still feel it, though I definitely feel it less now. And, like, growing up, people were always confused when they saw me with my parents. My dad is literally the whitest person on Earth — I remember sitting on his lap when I was really little and just tracing the veins in his arm because it was so weird that you could see them under his skin, but with me and my mum you could't — and my mum's Bangladeshi and wears a hijab and —'

He breathed a laughed and shook his head slightly. 'People never knew what to make of us.'

James fell silent for a second and Lily took a soft breath. She wanted to give him space to work out what he wanted to say, to work through things, because it had made the world of a difference to her and she just —

She wanted to be able to give this to him. This lighter feeling. It wasn't solved — nothing was solved — but she felt like the heavy weight that was always draped across her shoulders had lightened, even if it was slight.

She hadn't realised how much it had all be weighing her down until it wasn't anymore.

'I always struggled with how to identify myself,' he said. 'For a long time, I couldn't tick two boxes on forms — which seems stupid, I guess, to fixate on, but I just remember staring down at them and not being able to figure out which box to tick. Because to pick one was to deny the other one and — I always felt odd about that.

'But people in the street didn't see the fact that I was half white. They saw the BAME half. The brown half. And, growing up, there were loads of people like me around, so I didn't really feel _too _out of place about it. But then I went to Cambridge and — I mean, that was a whole new world. There were more white people than I've ever seen in my life.' He chuckled. 'Just. Everywhere. It was me and, I think like five other BAME people in the whole place. And so then I was having to think about my race in a wholly different way than I had been and —'

He swallowed and shrugged his shoulder. 'I get it. That feeling like you're between two worlds and you don't want to choose but the world is forcing you to. I get it.'

'I wish I'd figured out how to walk that line better,' she said. 'Over time, the Muggle side of myself just started to fall away. I stopped going to Cokeworth to visit my sister the year I graduated Hogwarts. I haven't been in touch with her in — it has to have been years. I was so determined to make a mark on this world that I'd come to accept as the one I was supposed to be in that I never left it. I never tried to create balance, to bring my worlds together in a way that made sense. I didn't even think about that as an option.'

She looked up at him then and she hoped he could feel the weight she was putting into her gaze. Hoped he knew just how deeply she meant what she was about to say.

'I've been thinking, more and more often, about how I might blend things in the future.'

'Have you?'

She nodded and pressed herself up to kiss him softly, once, twice, lingering a bit on the third, before she turned and buried her nose in his neck. And he smelled so good — like warm spice and strong tea and crisp cold air — and it was amazing to her how this, already, felt like home.

She snuggled in closer and kissed his neck lightly before she closed her eyes. 'I've been thinking about it a lot.'

* * *

**Find me on tumblr? Same username :))))**

**I'll see you next week, friends x**


	14. Chapter 14

**Happy Saturday, my friend. It's been an impossibly long week and I'm so glad it's the weekend. I'm sat here now with a cup of tea and I'm getting ready to write and ugh. It could only be a better morning if it was raining outside**

* * *

They spent the rest of the morning, and some of the early afternoon, in bed. James tried to talk her into getting dressed so they could go out and get lunch — 'A proper lunch,' he'd said, hovering over her and looking up at her in between the kisses he was peppering across her breasts. 'A proper _date_. Where we don't talk about anything except how good the food is and how beautiful you are.' — but Lily had just laughed and reminded him that, 'You're the Prime Minister, James, you can't just _go out _without it being a whole production.'

'And besides,' she'd said, smirking up at him, 'imagine what the papers would say if you went out on the town with some unknown woman.'

And, yes, he'd had to admit — the papers would certainly talk.

And while it was fun rolling around in the sheets with Lily and dropping teasing kisses across her skin as they guessed, what, exactly, the press would say about her, he knew that the reality would probably be significantly less entertaining.

And certainly less satisfying.

So they stayed in bed.

And James couldn't remember a better day.

They spent most of the time talking — about food and books and music and, for James, television programmes, about their favourite parts of London, the big trips they couldn't wait to go on, the things they still wanted to achieve — but, every now and again, their wandering hands became too distracting and they lost the thread.

They always found their way back, though, and neither of them really minded the distraction.

James wanted, more than anything, for her to stay the weekend. For them to spend it like this. Lying in his bed, or else sitting at his kitchen table or lounging on his sofa, eating random things they'd pulled from the fridge, chatting about anything that came to mind. It was soft and easy and warm and _god _he just — he wanted to spend weeks like this. Years.

But, of course, because neither of their lives could leave them alone for long, that weekend he desperately wanted just wasn't going to happen.

Later that afternoon, they were sat on his sofa watching an old episode of _Blue Planet _— every few minutes, Lily would gasp, 'Look at the massive eyes on that fish!' or 'Their little lights are _so cool_', and James couldn't help but smile at her — when there was a quick succession of sharp taps on the window on the other side of the lounge. Lily stiffened immediately and, after a heavy sigh, she pulled her feet out of James' lap and started across the room.

James sat up a bit straighter. 'What is it?'

'I'm not sure yet.'

Lily studied his window for a moment to find the catch before she slid it open and the owl on the sill stuck its leg inside so Lily could untie the letter there. The owl flew off the moment Lily loosened the letter and, after she shut and re-locked the window, Lily slid her finger underneath the seal and unfolded the parchment.

She was quiet for a moment, her eyes sliding quickly over whatever was written on the sheet, before she sighed heavily and let the letter fall down by her side.

'I've got to go,' she said. 'It's Moody. Apparently there's been some kind of break and —'

'Have them come here,' James said. 'We can — it's Saturday. No one's here except Security and — have them come here.'

Lily sighed heavily and looked back down at the letter in her hand. 'I don't think we — they've got a suspect and —' She took a deep breath and, when her eyes met his, they were guarded.

Final.

'I've got to go. I'll write to you as soon as I know more. Either on the pad or — well, maybe an owl. It might be too much for the pad.'

James bit the inside of his lip and drew in a slow, even breath. He held her gaze for a moment before he sighed, shook his head, and looked down at his knees.

'I'll just wait for you, I guess.'

'James, don't —' His eyes snapped up then and she broke off.

He raised an eyebrow. 'Don't what?'

She exhaled heavily. 'I'm sorry, James. I just — I can't — you can't come to this.'

There was more that she wasn't saying, he could tell by the almost blank look on her face, but he wasn't in the mood to press her. If she was hiding this right now, there was a reason. There had to be a reason. And he was frustrated, sure, and he wanted to know — he had a _right _to know — but he wasn't going to get anywhere by pushing her on it right now and so —

'Fine.' He waved his hand dismissively. 'I'd appreciate a full report, though.'

She nodded immediately. 'As soon as I can get back to my desk and write it up, I'll send it over.'

The studied each other for a moment across the lounge before James sighed and pushed himself to his feet. He was still annoyed — _really _annoyed — but he couldn't —

He couldn't let her walk out of here when they were like this.

She was just going to her office, nothing was going to happen, probably, but still —

He held his arms out just slightly as he walked towards her and Lily sighed, something crumbling in her expression as she stepped into him and folded herself around him. They stood there for a moment, his nose in her hair, her cheek resting on his chest, and James almost let himself forget that they were arguing and she was on her way out the door just now.

He focused instead on the soft skin at the base of her neck, on running his thumb over that spot as he spread his fingers out over her back. Focused on the lightly sweet smell of her hair. The feel of her, the way her body fitted just so against his.

He focused on her, on this moment. Because everything else outside them….

It could wait. For another few seconds, it could wait.

They'd been standing there for a minute when Lily turned and rested her chin on his chest. James leant back a bit so he could look her in the eye.

'You're cross.'

'Yeah,' he said. There was no sense denying it. 'But you're going to go and I'm not going to stop you.'

She studied him for a moment, a look on her face that he couldn't quite pick apart. She looked a bit resigned, a bit unsure, a little bit frustrated, but he wasn't sure which feeling was winning out.

'I just need to do this alone,' she said.

He frowned. 'You do everything alone.'

'I —' She looked like she wanted to fight him on that point, but he raised an eyebrow at her and she sighed. 'Fine. But this I _actually_ have got to do alone. I — I can't do it properly if you're there.'

That got his back up.

'What've you got to do?'

She shook her head. 'I'll tell you later. But really,' she slid her hands around to his hips. 'I've got to go.'

And _god _he wanted to argue with her about this. He wanted to have a proper, shouty sort of row about it, but he knew that it wasn't going to get him what he wanted and he knew that it wasn't the best way to handle this anyway and he knew, really, that she did have to go.

That she wouldn't be telling him she had to go if she really didn't have to go.

She slid her hands from his hips and took a step back, grabbing her blazer from the arm of the sofa and slipping it on.

He watched as she adjusted the blazer around her shoulders. 'I don't like that you're leaving without telling me what's going on,' he said.

She held his gaze as she grabbed her wand off his coffee table and slid it into her blazer. 'I know.'

They both looked at each other for a long moment before she stepped forward and, tentatively, rested her hands on his stomach. When he didn't step back, she slid her hands up his chest, over his shoulders, and stepped into him again.

'I'll write as soon as I can,' she said. 'I'll tell you everything.'

She pressed up onto her toes and kissed him softly, her lips barely moving over his, and no matter how irritated he was, he couldn't help the way he responded when her mouth was on his. He felt his frustration start to drain away — not all of it, mind, but enough — as he reached up, threaded his fingers through her hair, and responded, his lips moving a bit more forcefully over hers.

She hummed against him and James moved his other hand up, his fingers trailing over her jaw as she fitted herself more tightly against him —

She pulled back suddenly, a breathless smile on her lips.

'That was probably a bad idea.'

He arched an eyebrow, his fingers still tracing short, teasing lines along her jaw. 'Was it?'

She nodded, but she didn't make any moves to back away. 'I can't be getting all distracted.'

'And yet…'

Lily pressed up onto her toes and kissed him again, chastely this time. She lowered back down onto her heels and took a step back. 'Alright. Do you mind if I use this fire?' She nodded towards the one along the far wall, the one he still hadn't used once since moving in.

He shrugged. 'No. Do you need a fire in it or?'

'I've got it.' She pulled her wand out of her pocket, pointed it at the empty grate, and gave it a quick flick, and a bright orange fire burst to life there.

He'd seen so much magic at this point that he really shouldn't be surprised, but still —

She smiled at him as she tucked her wand away and pulled a small pouch out of another pocket. She grabbed a pinch of the powder inside and tossed it into the fire.

'I'll write soon,' she said, as the fire blazed green.

James nodded. 'I'll be waiting.'

She held his gaze for a moment longer before she stepped into the fire and, in a rush of colour, she spun away.

The moment Lily'd disappeared, James sighed heavily and, because he realised that they'd crawled up towards his ears while he'd been standing there, he rolled his shoulders down in an attempt to ease the tension.

He tried not to get frustrated by the fact that she was keeping him out of this.

He wasn't entirely successful, but he'd take what he could get. Especially because there was no sense in working himself up about something that he couldn't change.

He was still sitting on the sofa a few hours later, his feet up on the coffee table, an old episode of _Gogglebox _on that was just distracting enough to keep him from obsessing but wasn't something he really needed to pay attention to, when there were a few sharp taps on the window.

James nearly shot up out of his seat when he noticed Lily's owl on the window sill.

As it was, he nearly sprinted across the lounge and yanked the window open — Circe was, per usual, not even remotely amused by his enthusiasm — so the owl could hop inside. Circe, though, was apparently not interested in staying, because she just stuck her leg inside James' window and looked at him, a bored sort of look on her face.

James untied the letter, his fingers fumbling slightly over the knot, and, the moment she was free, Circe turned and took off into the night.

James shut the window and slit the letter open as he walked back across the room to sit on the couch.

_26 April 2020 _— _01:19_

_James,_

_I know that you're probably still very frustrated that I left like I did this afternoon. I'm sorry. I know that it doesn't make up for it, for the feeling like I'm intentionally leaving you out, but I am. Sorry._

_Moody needed me to come in alone — he'd specified as much in his letter — because he needed me to take part in the questioning of the suspect they'd pulled in this evening. Me and Remus. We knew the person that they pulled in — we'd gone to school with him — and Moody thought that we might be able to get a bit more out of him._

_He was the one I told you about, actually. The one who attacked Mary in our fifth year._

_It was hard seeing him — world's biggest understatement — but I'm going to be alright. I think. _

_Anyway, we managed to get some good information out of him, Remus and I. Me especially. I'm not proud of the things I had to say to get them, but all that matters is that we got them. _

_They were planning on bombing the Waterloo Underground station. In a week._

James' breath fell out of him then and he had to set the letter down on his lap.

Waterloo.

Fucking _Waterloo station. _

They —

He let his eyes fall closed for a moment and he took a deep, steadying breath. He wasn't feeling any better when he opened them — his hands were still trembling — but he smoothed the paper out on his thigh as best he could and carried on reading.

_This is the first time we've ever gotten out ahead of them and actually stopped something and, James — thank god. That would have been… it would have been terrible. I can't even imagine how bad it would have been. _

_I'm going to be at the Ministry through the night and probably most the day tomorrow. I'm not sure when I'll be home again but I'll be in touch — probably over the pad. I don't think that anything else is going to happen, but things are a bit mad here at the moment (even carving out ten minutes to scribble this out, sorry about my handwriting by the way, was going to be impossible if I didn't shut my door and ask Remus to bar anyone else from entering for a few minutes). There are reporters from the _Prophet _around because news of the arrest somehow slipped and I've called in loads of people and — _

_I'll be here for a while. _

_I'll be in touch immediately, though, if anything changes. I don't anticipate anything else, but you never know. I hope you have a restful night. _

_x Lily_

_P.s. I wasn't going to mention it here because it seems wrong given the content of this letter, but I also couldn't end this without saying something. I had the most amazing time with you today/last night, James. And I know that now is the worst time, but I also think that it was just what I needed. To be with you. To open up. _

_I miss you already. So much._

_I'll see you Friday._

_xxxx_

James looked at the line of kisses at the end of the letter for a long minute, a stupid little smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he imagined her scratching them into the paper.

But then he looked back up and skimmed through her letter again — the boy who'd attacked her friend at school, _I'm not proud of the things I had to say to get them, I'm going to be alright. I think _— and, all of a sudden, he felt like his heart had climbed into his throat.

What had she had to say? And how could he be sitting here, in his fucking lounge, when she was in her office in the Ministry, alone, after something like that?

She'd said she was going to be okay, but he knew her. He knew her as well as he knew himself. And the fact that she'd even let herself tack on that "I think" without redrafting the entire letter so she didn't pass on that one moment of uncertainty?

He couldn't help but worry.

But she hadn't asked him to come.

And Remus was there. She wasn't alone.

He felt like he was justifying it to himself, staying at Number 10, but he —

Would he make it worse if he somehow figured out how to show up there? If he just rolled in and sat with her in her office and —

He exhaled hard and shook his head. He was being stupid. She hadn't asked him to come.

Still, he couldn't help running downstairs and grabbing his notepad and a pen off his desk and writing _You alright? _as he started back upstairs.

The pad was blank for a few seconds, but, by the time he was walking back through the door to the residence, he saw her reply start to blot back up through the page.

_Yes. Thank you for checking xx_

He looked down at the paper for a minute, waiting to see if she'd say anything else, but the notepad stayed determinedly blank. Finally, he took a quick breath and scribbled out another message.

_If you need me, Lily, I'm here for you. And if you need to come over, you know how to find my grate_

_I miss you, too xxxx_

He looked down at the paper for a bit but, when she didn't reply right away, James figured that she was caught up in something. He set the notepad down on his knee so it was just in the corner of his eye and flicked his gaze back up the to television. They were nearly at the end of this episode of _Gogglebox, _though, apparently, there was another one coming on immediately after. And while he enjoyed this show — which felt really strange to say, given what it was — he still couldn't bear to watch too much of it in a row, so he was going to have to either turn the television off and drag himself to bed or find something else to watch.

He should go to bed. Especially because he hadn't gotten any work done today and he was definitely going to have to catch up tomorrow.

He was just scrolling through the channel guide when saw a note appear on the paper from the corner of his eye.

_Thank you, James. Really. _

_I'll see you Friday xxxxx_

He looked down at her note for a long moment, a slightly warmer feeling flooding his chest. And it was amazing to him how little it took for him to melt completely again.

She just — she was —

He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath before he grabbed his notepad, shut off the television, and started off to bed.

* * *

**find me on tumblr? same username :)**

**I'll see you tomorrow**


	15. Chapter 15

**Happy Sunday! My rain wish came true and honestly I'm so happy I can't even begin to tell you**

* * *

They kept in regular contact over the next few days, he and Lily. More regular contact than they had done up to this point, so she either knew that he was getting to the point where he wasn't going to accept that she had to leave to go take care of things without properly telling him anything or she just wanted to be in more regular contact.

He couldn't decide which one of those he wanted it to be. Maybe both.

Nothing much happened throughout the week, at least, not much that she told him about. She was always writing him little notes on their notepad, it was true, but they were mostly smaller things. About the stunning cup of tea she'd made or this funny thing Remus had muttered under his breath at the budget meeting or something brilliant that Sophie had done to make her day just that much easier or, his favourite, just a little note to let her know that she was thinking of him, and those notes were great, but they weren't — they weren't what he wanted. Not entirely.

And squashing that slightly resentful part of himself — it was getting to be a little ridiculous. Because he did trust her. He trusted her to handle this, to do everything that she could to end this, to be the best leader she could be.

He did trust her.

But did he trust her to bring him along beside her? Because he was playing a constant and exhausting game of catch up. He was reacting to things that were days old by the time he heard about them and the initial shock of whatever it was combined with the sharp feeling that he was behind in the timeline of events combined to make him feel even worse.

And sure, he was hearing almost immediately when the really terrible things happened, but he wanted to hear about everything. And maybe it was the control freak politician in him, but really, he had a right to know what was going on and he had a right to know as soon as it happened.

He'd mentioned, in passing, to Kingsley one afternoon that he thought it might be nice if they received end of day reports, at least, from the Ministry, but Kingsley had just nodded sort of noncommittally.

And James appreciated Kingsley's ability to ignore his whining, but he also really just wanted Kingsley to agree with him.

Except it wasn't whining. He wasn't whining. This was his fucking country, for god's sake, and he needed to be informed.

They weren't running parallel governments anymore. Things had, quite obviously, converged, and he hated feeling out of the loop.

But he also knew that getting bitter about it wasn't going to make a damn bit of difference.

If anything, it was only going to make things worse.

So, late Tuesday night, after a long evening of PMQ prep, James grabbed his football notepad and jotted a quick note to Lily.

_Can we talk after the meeting on Friday? Or before, I don't care which_

James slid the notepad up beside the packet of papers he was reading so it was just in his line of sight and carried on. He'd only been reading for a few seconds, though, before Lily replied.

_Of course. Everything alright?_

He had no idea how to answer that.

Because, really, were things alright between them? Yes. "They", Lily and James, were fine. But "they", the Minister and the Prime Minister? They were having some fucking issues at the moment.

And separating that out, who they were in each individual moment, wasn't usually difficult. It was just in these interim moments, these spots of time where the Minister seriously affected how he was feeling about Lily.

And they needed to get that out in open, they needed a workable solution, because as James or as the Prime Minister, he couldn't continue obsessing about this. It was taking up too much brain space and that was very, very valuable real estate.

And so, even though part of him thought better of it because he knew that laying his cards on the table would mean that Lily had three days to frame an argument, he knew that if he wanted her to be more open, he was going to have to extend the same courtesy.

He picked up his pen and scribbled back —

_Yeah. We just need to talk about communication_

This time he watched the paper for her reply. And, as before, it was only a few seconds before her message appeared.

_Ok — See you Fri x_

Luckily, James didn't have too much time to worry about their Friday meeting, or his impending conversation with Lily, over the next few days. He spent much more time — an inordinate amount of time, really — imagining how satisfying it would be to tell Rees Mogg to _get fucked_ on the floor of the Commons (Margot and Kingsley both agreed that it would probably be very emotionally satisfying, but not quite worth the political fallout). Because even though Brexit was _technically _over — they were out of the woods, at any rate — they still had to do what they could to repair the damage they'd wrought to their relationship with Europe, which turned out to be a much bigger job that James had anticipated (and he'd anticipated that it would be quite a massive undertaking).

And he wasn't over in Brussels nearly as often as he had been in the last year — and thank _god _because he was so damn tired of that trip at this point — but between hashing out some of the issues that remained now that they'd… remained and dealing with everything else that was suddenly much more pressing now that the immediate Brexit crisis had passed (and, you know, the fact that there were a bunch of murderous wizards trying to blow up everything they could think of), James was nearly at the end of his rope all the time.

He was always one more issue away from the whole carefully balanced system crumbling and sending everything into chaos. One carefully worded barb away from telling everyone in the Commons to go fuck themselves.

And, worse, he was pretty sure that the fucking Tories knew that because they took every opportunity they could to push his buttons during PMQs.

And he knew the questions were coming — he prepped and prepped and _prepped _— but no amount of preparation made it easier to sit there in the Commons and listen to someone asking him a question in the most condescending way humanly possible, stringing the sentences together like they were talking to a toddler instead of the fucking Prime Minister.

Keeping his cool…. It was becoming harder and harder these days. And it was all the more critical that he manage it.

Needless to say, come Friday afternoon, James was completely worn out. He was sitting, chair pushed out as far as it could go from underneath the desk, his legs sprawled out, and his glasses tossed onto the stack of papers he'd very recently given up reading, and, honestly, praying for death, when there was a knock on the door.

James sat up straighter in his chair as he grabbed his glasses and slid them back onto his face. 'Come in.'

Margot pushed open the door, smiling at him when she caught his eye. 'Afternoon, sir.'

James gave her a tired smile. 'Afternoon, Margot.' He nodded towards the stack of folders in her arms. 'What've you got for me?'

She sighed and shifted the papers into her hands as she crossed his office. 'Press clippings,' she held out the top, bright yellow folder. 'I know you didn't want them this morning, but —' She shrugged and James bit back a smile as he set the folder on his desk.

She handed him a massive stack of papers. 'Here's the most recent set of reports about the —'

'If you say "Common Fisheries Policy", I swear to god —'

'Common Fisheries Policy.' She flashed him an apologetic smile and James dropped the reports onto his desk with a sigh.

'Do you think we'll be talking about fishing until we die?'

'I'd say that's entirely likely, sir.' Her tone was perfectly even, but there was no mistaking the light amusement in her eyes.

James chuckled. 'Where would I be without you?'

She smiled. 'I'm sure you'd manage.'

'Bold of you to lie right to my face.'

'Bold of _you _to use the new slang Mr Black taught you.'

James snorted. 'Damn it, Smyth, can't I have anything?'

Her smile widened as she held out the final folder in her arms. He scowled at her. 'This isn't what I meant.'

'Update to the intelligence brief you received this morning,' she said, completely ignoring him. 'A few last minute things came over the wire and they wanted them in front of you today.'

James frowned. 'Anything serious?'

'I'm not sure, sir. But it's probably not nothing — they were pretty insistent.'

James' frown deepened. 'Damn it.'

Margot nodded and folded her hands neatly in front of her. 'If you need anything, I'll be right outside.'

'No, Margot,' James waved his hand. 'It's a Friday night. Go home. Go out. Go anywhere else other than your desk.'

'But —'

James shook his head. 'If I need something that urgently, I'll call you. But I highly doubt I'll need anything that I can't either do myself or that can't wait until Monday.'

Margot bit the corner of her lip and rocked her weight back onto her heels. James flipped open the intelligence folder and grabbed a red pen out of the cup in the corner of his desk. 'I'm serious. Go. Live that work life balance.'

Margot snorted. 'Rich, coming from you.'

James scrunched his nose up at her. 'I never said I was a good example to follow.'

She laughed. 'I guess that's true.'

He nodded. 'Now go home.'

Margot sighed. 'Alright, well…. My phone is set to ring if you —'

'I won't.'

'But in case —'

'I'll see you Monday, Margot. Have a lovely weekend.'

She sighed again, this one a bit more exasperated than the last. 'I hope you have a lovely weekend, too, sir.'

He nodded towards the packet of papers she'd handed him earlier. 'I think my weekend was destined to be a brilliant one the moment you handed me those fishery reports.'

She laughed again and shook her head at him. 'I'll see you Monday. But, really, if you need me —'

'Yes, Smyth, I'll call. But I'm telling you, I won't call.'

She sighed. 'Alright. Have a lovely weekend.'

James smiled at her. 'You, too. And tell Gem I said hello.'

Margot laughed, 'Will do,' as she pulled her mobile out of her pocket and started back across the office. She was deep, already, in something as she pulled the door shut behind her. James shook his head — just subtly enough that she wouldn't notice and turn back — and chuckled softly to himself.

He really was so lucky to have someone like Margot working for him. Someone so brilliant and dedicated and willing to put up with his shit (of which there was a lot, especially lately).

But she also needed to take a weekend. A real, honest to god weekend, where she didn't read her email or think about work or, hell, even watch the news.

They all needed that weekend, honestly, but Margot most especially.

James sighed and rapped the end of his pen against the desk before he looked back down at the new intelligence briefing in front of him. It wasn't long, just a few pages, but that wasn't necessarily an sign one way or the other of whether or not he was going to like what he was about to read. He sighed and ran his eyes over the first sentence.

_Recently completed investigations suggests that the string of disasters over the last five months has not, as was initially reported and believed, the result of accidents._

Holy….

Holy shit.

He took a moment, took a breath.

_Investigators are still at a loss to explain _how _these events occurred, but investigations of the sites — especially the blast and fire sites (Babbage, 44/11 explosion; Oasis Leisure Centre Swindon; Warwick Books; Ouse Bridge; Inflatable Park fire) — have generated questions that investigators are unable to satisfactorily answer by attributing these disasters to natural or spontaneous causes. None of the evidence in these cases is overwhelming — more often, they are slight inconsistencies, pieces of information that don't quite fit into the argument that these disasters were accidental in origin. _

_Full reports on all investigations are forthcoming but, given the urgency of the matter, we've opted to include executive summaries here —_

_**Babbage, 44/11**_ — _According to all logbooks and first-hand accounts from surviving witnesses, the Babbage 44/11 platform was operating normally prior to and on the day of the 17th January explosion. The investigation into the explosion corroborated these accounts — the automatic fire-fighting system was, at no point, triggered prior to the explosion, the pressure valve readings (sent automatically to a cloud-hosted database to ensure recovery in the event of an accident) were stable and within the normal range, up to a minute prior to the explosion. There is no evidence that anything operating on the platform itself would have generated the explosion, which, alone, is enough to suggest outside involvement. This suggestion is further supported by the fact that the explosion site lies outside both the well sites and gas gathering sites, the most common sites for oil-well related explosion on the platform itself. The explosion instead originated from the control room where no known explosive elements are housed. It is unclear what would have ignited, let alone what would have ignited with enough force to destroy the platform. It is also unclear how, after several fires and two significant explosions that caused extensive structural damage to the steel support structures, the oil platform remained standing. The DoECC engineers and consulting engineers brought onsite have no explanation for either the explosion or the structure's relative stability._

_**Oasis Leisure Centre**_ — _The initial investigation suggested that there was a failure in the heating system that ultimately led to the system catching fire. This initial conclusion was supported by readouts from the pressure system that, in the hour leading up to the fire, showed minor anomalies. Further investigation revealed, though, that the epicentre of the fire was located near a rear entry door instead of near the more centrally-located heating and boiler area. _

_**Warwick Books**_ — _The final investigation by the Coventry Fire Brigade shows that the fire began near the front of the store, far away from the fireplace in the back that was, initially, thought to be the cause of the fire. No electrical issues, heating failures, or other potential ignition sources (cigarettes, candles, etc.) were found in the investigation. _

_**The Ouse Bridge**_ — _An engineering works project began in May 2018 to replace all 240 bearings on the bridge. The bearings were replaced in twelve-night phases over the last year — August 2018, January 2019, and April 2019 — and every engineering assessment completed at the time and leading up to the 23rd February collapse has shown the bridge to be in good physical condition. Repairs and maintenance were completed on time with materials that met or exceeded DfT standards. Upon initial investigation after the 23rd February collapse, it was immediately determined that none of the standard external factors were at fault (weather, fire, geological changes, an unsustainable traffic increase). It was assumed, at that point, that a structural failure was the cause of the collapse. And while further investigation showed, indeed, many signs of failure in several of the bearings, DfT engineers do not believe that the type of damage recorded could have occurred spontaneously. _

_**Red Lion Pub**_ — _As with the Warwick Books fire, the fire began near the front entrance to the pub. There is no evidence of electrical malfunction, heating malfunction, or small-scale external causes, like cigarettes or candles. _

_**Inflatable Park**_ — _The investigation into Inflatable Park soft play centre was a complex, wide-ranging investigation, especially because a number of the surviving witnesses were children who could not, on their own, consent to provide evidence. A few parents did authorise their child's participation. Some of the witnesses reported seeing "sparks" and "bright colours" in the corner that, the investigation revealed, was the centre of the explosion. It should also be noted, though, that there were two birthday parties running at the time, one of which provided brightly coloured streamers to the children. As with the other fires discussed, there is no satisfactory cause for the blaze. _

_It is unclear at this time, given the severe lack of other evidence, how these disasters might have occurred or who, if anyone, is responsible for them. Despite our clear intelligence gaps, the investigations are too suggestive to ignore and we have been forced to conclude that these disasters were, in fact, not accidents, but intentional._

James exhaled hard and leant back in his seat.

Fucking hell.

He had no idea how everyone was going to take it, but he —

He had to bring this to the meeting later that evening.

Because he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do — he hadn't asked anyone to look into these incidents anymore than they were going to have to to complete the standard report and he honestly hadn't thought that they'd find anything to go on.

He hadn't expected any of the explosions or fires or anything else to leave a detectable trace. And maybe that was foolish of him, thinking that there wouldn't be evidence left behind — or thinking that the lack of evidence wouldn't be suspicious enough to initiate a new query in and of itself — but the fact remained that, no matter what he'd thought going in, the people investigating these things had, indeed, found them suspicious enough to bring it to his urgent attention.

And he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with that, knowing what he knew about the true cause of these disasters.

Though it did give him an increased sense of confidence in the people he'd hired into these Departments because, clearly, they were competent folks.

His initial response was to bring this to the meeting tonight, but to let the investigative bodies continue their work regardless of what opinion was shared with him this evening. Because, no matter how positive a working relationship he'd established with the Ministry, he knew that their gut instinct, always, was to protect the secrecy of their community.

And James didn't have the right, as an outsider, to make decisions about that for them, but he didn't think that he had the right to stop legal investigations just because they might turn up a few more incriminating details, either.

Because, ultimately, lives were at stake. And he knew, though no one ever said it to his face, that they — the Ministry — didn't expect him to be able to contribute much to the investigations that they were running. He knew that he was there mostly just to appease him — because he'd insisted and Lily had been keen to collaborate — and he sensed that they didn't expect him to participate very much.

And, to date, he hadn't really. He hadn't brought much to these meetings other than a few ideas about things that he could do on the Muggle side of things — usually increasing Muggle awareness of certain suspects they were hoping to track down or creating safety campaigns or giving them ideas from their practices and procedures that they could think about implementing —and he hadn't bothered feeling bad about the obvious intelligence differential. He hadn't expected to bring a lot of information to these meetings — the people perpetrating these crimes weren't in his part of the country, weren't in any of the governmental records, and they weren't using any kind of technology that his intelligence services might be able to pick up, but this?

Well, this wasn't much of anything at the moment, but it wasn't nothing. It absolutely wasn't nothing.

James drafted a quick memo, which he attached to the report, and sent the packet via secure email to his NCA Director General. It wasn't much — just a quick _Received this report — full texts forthcoming — but I'd like to meet to discuss opening a larger investigation. Margot will be in touch on Monday to get your schedule._

He probably should have waited to talk with Lily and Moody and everyone from the Ministry before he decided to pursue these reports, but, no matter what they said to him this evening, he wasn't going to drop it.

Still, he spent the rest of the evening with the nerves quietly building in his stomach as he prepared for what could, very easily, be a very awkward and difficult conversation. He'd had worse conversations and he'd had them with more contentious people, but he still couldn't help the small bout of nerves that liked to bundle up in his stomach as he prepared for these sorts of things.

No amount of experience, no number of years had made it so he didn't feel at least a little nervous anymore.

Still, he'd largely managed to get a handle on himself by the time the Ministry folks were arriving and he was standing in the centre of his office, a bland sort of smile on his face as they climbed out of the grate.

'Good evening.' Amelia had arrived first this evening and he stepped forward to shake her hand as someone — Moody — spun into view in the fire behind her. 'How're you?'

She smiled at him and tipped her head noncommittally from side to side. 'Alright. You?'

James nodded. 'About the same.' He stepped forward and shook Moody's hand, then Arthur's, because he'd arrived while James'd been talking with Moody and Amelia.

He looked to the fire as he finished greeting Arthur, sure that Lily was going to be there, but the fire was burning normally again. He must have frowned because Arthur cleared his throat and, when James looked around, he was smiling.

'She'll be in shortly. She had a last minute hold up in her office.'

James hummed, a small smile just lighting his face. 'I love last minute hold ups.'

Arthur chuckled. 'Aren't they just the best part of your day?'

He laughed and nodded. 'That's exactly how I'd describe them.'

It was a few minutes before Lily appeared in the fire, looking mildly harassed when she finally did so. It wasn't immediately obvious — James probably only noticed that she was annoyed because he knew her so well — but, still, she smoothed her features as she stepped out of the grate and smiled around at everyone in James' office.

'Sorry I'm late, everyone.' She unfastened her cloak and, without thinking, slung it over the coat rack in the corner.

They all shook their heads, but it was James who spoke first. 'No,' James said, 'no apologies necessary.'

Lily's eyes flicked towards his and she held his gaze for a beat… two…

They both sucked in a breath and James turned and smiled as effortlessly as he could manage. 'Tea's in the conference room already, so if we'd like to?' He gestured towards the door and Amelia, Arthur, and Moody nodded.

Lily brushed her fingers along the side of his hand as she reached him. 'Hi.'

And he hadn't meant to — he was still a little annoyed with her about all the secrecy, was still quietly thinking about how pissed off she was going to be in a few minutes when she found out he okayed his investigators digging into these disasters more than they already had and they were in a room barely separated from their colleagues….

He hadn't meant to, but the slightest brush of her fingers against his hand and he felt like a pressure on his chest had lifted and he could breathe again, and so he turned his hand and caught her fingers with his, squeezing just slightly, as he smiled down at her.

'I missed you.'

She wound her fingers just a bit tighter through his. 'I missed you, too.'

She held his hand for a moment longer before they realised that they were falling drastically behind. They let their hands fall back by their sides and, after injecting a bit more space between them, they made their way down the corridor towards the conference room.

* * *

**see you next week, my friend**

**I hope you have a lovely, lovely week x**


	16. Chapter 16

**Hello, friends! We're back!**

**Sorry this is a bit later than usual - I was sat at the mechanic while they replaced my brakes. The joys of adulthood never cease.**

**Anyway, enjoy! I'll see you tomorrow with more x**

* * *

Everyone was busy preparing their tea when they walked in a few moments later. Only Arthur looked up and smiled at them before he went back to stirring his tea.

James was certain that Arthur knew or, at the very least, suspected, that something was going on between him and Lily and he wasn't quite sure what to make of that.

Because he and Lily hadn't explicitly talked about hiding their relationship, or whatever they were calling this thing between them, but they also worked together — not officially, but —

Anyway, he wasn't sure what was best. Telling people or keeping it private. Or as private as they could manage.

Probably private.

If he had to guess.

Still, he grabbed the remaining teacups off the tray and prepared tea, handing Lily's over with a soft smile before he stirred a spoonful of sugar into his own and sat down in his usual seat along the side of the table.

He took a tentative sip — it had been sitting for a minute, so the temperature was actually alright — before he cleared his throat and scanned the table.

'Why so quiet today?'

Amelia cleared her throat. Arthur took a sip of his tea. Moody glanced, so quickly that James would have missed if he hadn't been watching, towards Lily.

Lily took a sip of her tea and straightened just slightly in her chair as she looked over at him.

'We had a development earlier this evening,' she said. 'We're still coming to terms with it, I think. It was —' She paused for a moment as she tried to figure out how to phrase it.

'It was illuminating,' she said at last. 'Of their position and, not to sound like a nursery rhyme, their ambitions.'

James frowned. 'How so?'

'We're starting to suspect that they might be motivated by more than just murder,' Moody said.

James frowned, his gaze flicking between Moody and Lily at the head of the table. 'What else could be motivating them?'

'We think they're planning a power grab,' Moody said.

Lily was looking down at her hands, folded neatly on the table in front of her, when James looked up at her. She showed no sign of having heard what Moody said, no sign that it worried her if she had.

James was just about to look away when her eyes snapped up to his.

And, he exhaled, she'd been determined before, dedicated, but there was a new ferocity in the way she was looking at him now, a dark determination that, honestly, probably would have scared the shit out of him if it'd been directed at him.

He pulled his eyes from hers and looked back at Moody. 'What evidence have you got?'

'Well,' Moody leant back in his chair, 'someone cast an Imperius curse on —'

James frowned. 'Imperius curse?'

'Mind control curse,' Moody said. 'They cast it on one of Amelia's staff with the idea, we think, of getting to Amelia who would then get to the Minister.'

James felt like his stomach bottomed out. Absolutely plummeted straight through him.

'Lily?' His mouth was so dry he could barely get the word out, but Moody didn't seem to notice. Or, if he did, he wasn't bothered by it.

He nodded. 'Luckily it was reported to us and we were able to reverse it in time. He's in St Mungos recovering and he's under strict security.'

'Is there any way to track who put it on him? To get a name or something?'

Moody shook his head. 'We're able to do the reverse — see what spells someone has cast from their wand in the past — but there's no way to determine who cast a spell just by the looking at the magic itself.'

'So...' He glanced at Lily again. 'What are you going to do?'

'We've assigned the Minister official security —'

'You haven't had _security?!_'

Lily cut her gaze up to his and there was no mistaking the fact that he was now the intended target of her irritation.

'No. I'm an Auror, in case you've forgotten.'

'Lily —'

She held up her hand. 'It's over, that's not open for debate. I've got security now, anyway, so it's moot.'

James wanted to press her on it, but he knew that now, in front of everyone else, was not the time.

Still, he couldn't quite help himself.

'Well, I'm glad you've got security. Auror or not. I'm glad.'

Lily held his gaze for a moment, the annoyance still very clearly visible there, before she pulled her eyes away and took a sip of her tea.

'Anyway,' she set the mug down on the table and turned it around once in her hands. 'We're working to determine who might be responsible. I'm sure Ogden will want to be helpful when he's conscious, but we're going to have to wait until the healers feel like it's safe to wake him.'

James nodded. 'So what's going on in the interim?'

'Same as always,' she said. 'We've had a bit of intelligence that may or may not pan out, but it looks like we have a few suspects we'd like to pursue.'

'And how are they related to the investigation so far? Are they new names or?'

Lily shook her head. 'Not totally. They're old names, but they're newly associated with this, uh, _round _of unrest. I've had a few people accusing me of bias in the Wizengamot this week, actually, for making it known that we were actively pursuing these folks, but,' she shrugged and took another sip of her tea. 'I don't see why they're upset about having to come talk to me if they haven't got something they're trying to hide.'

Moody laughed, the sound gruff and, to James' amusement, a little sarcastic. Amelia raised an eyebrow at him. 'We operate on the presumption of innocence, Alastor.'

Moody gave her a grisled smile. 'Don't I know it, Madam Bones.'

'Anyway,' Lily said, 'we've got warrants out to bring them in for questioning, so we should see them before long.

'Otherwise, we're following up on some of the intelligence we've gathered over the last week or so to see if that might get us anywhere. Things have gone quiet again which —' James sucked in a sharp breath and Lily nodded. 'Exactly.'

'Has anything come out of that yet?' he asked.

She shook her head. 'Nothing that's reached me.' She glanced over towards Moody, who shook his head.

'Longbottom was in touch late this afternoon that they were following up on something, but I haven't heard anything beyond that and he didn't give me details.'

James nodded and the table was quiet for a few beats. Lily turned to him and raised her eyebrows.

'Anything from your end?'

James pressed his lips together and nodded slowly as he flicked back through his memory to what he'd been planning to say.

It probably didn't matter so much, being careful, but he knew well enough to know that even the most innocuous things could become complete nightmares if you weren't careful.

'A few hours ago,' he inhaled and sat up a bit straighter in his chair, 'I received a report from the investigative bodies that are currently looking into the attacks from the last few months.'

James paused, but no one asked for clarification, so he continued. 'They've been running these investigations for a few months, depending on when the attack itself occurred, and they've started pulling together their individual findings to compile into public reports. I got a letter tonight that brought together some of those preliminary pieces of information with the express purpose of pointing out to me that each and every one of these investigations was highly unusual.'

Lily frowned. 'Unusual in what way?'

'In that the evidence they expected to find was entirely absent and what they _did _find was… confusing.'

Lily's brow furrowed. 'What?'

'Sorry, I — okay, let's take the fires. They expected, if the fires were accidental, to find some sort of electrical failure, heating failure, remnants of an unattended candle, that sort of thing. There was none of that, so then they start operating under the assumption that they were set intentionally.'

Lily nodded.

'But,' James took a breath, 'then they didn't find any clear evidence of arson outside the suspicious spreading pattern of the fires themselves. There was no accelerant residue, no evidence of what might have started the fire. From the investigation's standpoint, it looks like the front of the building just instantaneously burst into flames.'

Lily hummed and James watched as she started turning her mug around in her hands.

'The bridge, too, introduced similar confusion. In the absence of external causes like weather or geological change, we're looking at a potential engineering failure. But the bearings were all replaced over the last calendar year and, according to the engineers in my Department of Energy and Climate Change and the engineers they brought in to consult on the investigation, the kinds of breaks they noticed in the bearings themselves could only have been achieved by an external force. They aren't stress breaks — they're not the result of freezing and thawing or increased traffic on the M62. But, like the fires, the engineers are at a loss as to how to explain what external force might have acted here.'

Lily spun her cup around one more in her hand before she looked up and her eyes found his.

'What did you say? In response?'

James held her gaze as he replied. 'I copied the report, wrote a short memo, and sent it to the Director General of the National Crime Agency.'

He heard her draw in a slow, measured breath and, completely inappropriately, he felt the slightest thrill roll through him.

'With the goal of doing what exactly?'

He wanted to shrug, say something just a _little _too cheeky, and if they were alone, he might've done. He caught himself just before he made just the sort of jaunty gesture that he knew he desperately wanted to make and he leaned back in his seat instead.

'I didn't have a specific goal in mind,' he said, which was mostly true. 'But I can't very well prevent them from carrying out an investigation.'

'It sounds like their investigations were complete. Inconclusive,' Lily said, raising her voice slightly because James had opened his mouth, a furious expression on his face, 'but complete.'

This time, he did shrug. 'They felt the results of those initial investigations concerning enough to bring them to my immediate attention. It seemed irresponsible to ignore it.'

'So instead you sent the reports off to ensure that they were investigated further.'

James nodded, and though he knew he was looking at her with a challenging sort of expression on his face, he was annoyed enough now at her frustration with him that he didn't much care. 'Yes.'

She raised an eyebrow. 'Don't you think that's irresponsible?'

'What's irresponsible about it?'

'You think that having them dig into something like this is a good idea?'

'I don't see why it's a bad idea.'

Lily threw her hands up, nearly knocking her tea cup over. 'The Statute!? The fact that they aren't supposed to know anything about us?! Because if you're correct in assuming that they're as _astute _as you seem to think they are —'

'I'm tired of this painting of us like we aren't bloody capable!' He was only distantly aware, now, that he and Lily were sitting in a conference room with three other people who were, probably, feeling very uncomfortable about the fact that he and Lily were speaking this sharply with one another. 'Did our investigations, for instance, turn up anything conclusive in the way of _wizard involvement_? No. But they _did _turn up the fact that something incredibly odd is going on and, honestly, it's irresponsible _not_ to let them continue to comb over the evidence. You never know what they'll turn up.

'They're coming at this with a different perspective, necessarily, and that's valuable.' He jabbed his index finger into the table to punctuate the sentence. 'It might not seem like it because we _both _know that they're never going to come to the conclusion that wizards are involved, but you also don't know _what _they might find. It could be valuable information and to avoid gathering it because you don't want them to accidentally figure out that there's magic — I mean, Lily, that's _never _going to happen! And if it did, would it honestly be the worst thing?'

'The fact that you're even asking me that shows your severe lack of understanding of the matter,' she snapped.

They looked each other for a long moment before Lily sighed, her gaze softening a bit before she looked down to pick up her teacup.

'We'll talk about it,' she said, lifting the cup to her lips. 'We don't need to do this right now.'

James shook his head and drained the rest of his own tea. 'We don't.'

'Okay,' Lily cleared her throat and looked around at the table. 'Anyone have anything else?'

Moody and Arthur both shook their heads, but Amelia leant forward in her seat so they all turned to her.

'Quick update,' she said. 'The cases against Dower and Johnson are moving forward. Their first hearing is scheduled for the first of May.'

Lily nodded. 'Thanks, Amelia.' Amelia topped her head in acknowledgement and Lily was quiet for a moment in case someone else had anything else to add.

When no one else said anything, Lily smiled but it was quite obviously forced. 'Alright. Thanks, everyone. Same time next week. Have a good weekend.'

Neither Lily nor James moved at first, as the sound of chairs scraping out from underneath the table filled the silence. Lily wasn't looking at him, she was looking at the mug in her hands, but she seemed to snap back into herself after a moment because she drained her cup, stood, and grabbed the tea tray from the centre of the table in one swift movement before she started towards the door.

'I —' James hopped to his feet and held his hands out. 'I can take that.'

Lily shook her head and smiled again, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. 'You brought it in. I'll carry it out.'

She grabbed Amelia's cup from the table as though she was proving a point before she slipped out into the corridor.

James sighed heavily and closed his eyes for a moment. He drew in a slow, steady breath, counting, one… two… three… in his head before he opened his eyes, grabbed his cup and, leaning a bit so he could reach, Moody's from the corner, and followed Lily back to his office.

Arthur and Lily were chatting quietly when James arrived — Amelia and Moody were nowhere to be seen, so James assumed they must have already left — but they broke off when Arthur noticed James walk into the room. He smiled at James over Lily's shoulder and tipped his head at him.

'Thanks for the tea as always, James.'

James nodded and smiled. 'Of course. How're Molly and the boys?'

Arthur grinned. 'Molly's great. She's about finished being pregnant, I'll tell you, but the twins'll be here soon enough and I think we'll end up regretting hoping that they'd hurry up and get here.' He chuckled and James smiled.

'The boys are great, though,' Arthur said. 'Percy's too little to really know about what's going on, but Bill and Charlie are both really excited and have been "helping" as much as Molly'll let them.'

James laughed. 'That's adorable.'

Arthur nodded. 'Mostly. It's significantly less adorable when there's flour all over the floor because the boys are trying to "make Mummy's favourite biscuits for her", but it's still sweet in it's own right.'

They chatted for a few more minutes before Arthur checked his watch. 'I've got to get home,' he said. 'The boys need their baths in a few minutes and it is a two parent effort.'

Lily and James both nodded. 'Of course,' Lily said. 'Have a good weekend, Arthur. Tell Molly I say hello.'

'Will do. Night.'

They watched in silence as Arthur pulled a pinch of Floo Powder out of his pocket and disappeared.

Now, just the two of them, James felt the air in the room thicken.

Neither of them said anything for a minute. Their gazes just flicked between one another, the floor, the window, his desk —

Finally, Lily cleared her throat.

'You said you wanted to talk. About communication?'

James almost laughed — he'd forgotten about that note he'd sent her over the course of the meeting — but, luckily, he managed to keep it together.

He nodded. 'Yes. I wanted to see if we could work out a smoother way of communicating things. I feel like I'm playing catch up and I'm always a few days behind by the time we get to the Friday meeting.'

Lily's expression went carefully blank and she considered him for a moment before she replied. And he _knew _she was framing her argument, getting the approach just right, he _knew it_, but he wasn't any less irritated when she finally replied.

'I understand you're frustrated. But I don't think it's realistic to expect that we can be in contact any more than we already are on things.'

'Why not?' he snapped. He wasn't even trying to keep calm, to play the politician — he was annoyed as hell and this was _Lily _and if he had the luxury of being genuine around anyone —

'Because things are a little busy, James.' Her voice was still controlled, but James could hear the slightest waver there that meant she was on the edge. And he hated the part of himself that was glad she was getting angry, that wanted her to just shout at him because then, maybe, he'd get the unfiltered Lily, the Lily that didn't pass through fifty fucking layers of concrete and pick out anything that could be potentially damaging.

He'd seen that Lily — alone, together, in his bed, chatting for hours — and he —

He knew she couldn't be like that all the time, it was the nature of the work, he understood that, but he hated that she went back to the Ministry and she threw the wall back up between them.

And maybe that, really, was the heart of this particular issue.

He hated the divide she'd placed between James, the Prime Minister, and Lily, the Minister. Because maybe he wasn't so good at differentiating those two parts of themselves after all.

'I can't just drop everything and send you an owl,' she continued, the anger in her voice becoming clearer with every word. 'I don't have _time _to send you an owl when things are literally falling apart.'

'I don't expect that, Lily, jesus,' James said, shaking his head. 'Just a quick note on the pad at the end of the day, a bulleted list —'

'I haven't been home for more than a few hours in three days,' Lily said. 'And then I walk in the door and collapse into bed and then four hours later I'm getting another owl and I'm going back into work. And I'm not complaining, that's the job I signed up for, but I need you to understand that that's why I'm not able to write to you every day. I have things going on that are more important than my sending you a letter.'

'But those things affect me! It would be different if I was sitting here saying _oh, Lily, I never hear from you, please write me love letters all day every day _but this is about _work_. And the people I'm responsible for are the ones suffering here. It isn't your soft play centres being burnt to the fucking ground or your bridges being blown up — they're _mine. _And —'

Lily straightened slightly and held her finger up at him. 'You know, you talk about communication, but then you turn around and do shit like what you did tonight without consulting me!? James, that's —'

'It's what?' He threw his hands up. 'I'm not allowed to run my own government anymore? I have to run everything past you?'

'You want _me _to run everything past you!'

'I don't! I just —' He sighed heavily. 'I don't want to be finding out that major things are happening days after they happened. I don't want to spend the week paranoid that something is going to happen that I'm not going to hear about because it just happens to be a Monday! I mean, Lily, they — they tried to get to _you_. Days ago! And I'm _just _hearing about it!'

'These things were always on a need to know basis, James, and I hope you'll excuse me for saying it, but a lot of this shit you don't _need to know. _You don't need to know the minute it happens because there's nothing that you can do to stop it!'

'So I'm just supposed to sit around and do nothing and wait to be told what's going on? I'm supposed to just wait, knowing full well that more people might die in the interim, and do _nothing_?'

'_That's_ the problem,' she said. 'You don't like sitting on your hands. You don't like not having a say.'

'You say that like I'm going to start demanding that you do things my way or that you change your course of action because I think I know better than you. I'm not stupid enough to think that's the case, first of all, and, second, that isn't what this is about, Lily.

'People are _dying. _Of _course _I don't like sitting on my hands. But I'm not trying to hem you in or hold you up or — or stop you doing anything. I just want to know what's going on. And, like I said in the meeting, I'm tired of the assumption that there's nothing we can do about it because I think my investigators have made it pretty clear that they aren't nearly as clueless as you all would like to believe they are.'

'I don't think you're clueless, James, for fucks sake.' She shook her head. 'I just think that there are very real limitations —'

'There are always limitations. With everything, there are limits. There are limits to what you're able to do, too, your limits are just different than mine.'

He expected her to snap back with a retort right away, but something about his comment seemed to have knocked her onto her heels, because she was silent for a moment. James took a deep breath and, watching her carefully, took a slight step forward.

'I'm not asking you to drop everything,' he said, his voice softer now. 'You don't even have to write it — Remus or Sophie or — they can send me the note. And it doesn't have to be anything massive, I'll literally take a bullet point. A singular point,' he said, and something about the way he said it made her lips twitch.

She sighed heavily, closing her eyes for a moment and shaking her head before she met his gaze again. 'Fine. And I'm not just giving in,' she said, raising her eyebrows at him, 'I'm — I'm _agreeing _with you.' It looked like she just barely stopped herself rolling her eyes and James bit the corner of his lip to keep from smiling.

'It doesn't have to be every day. Just — if something happens?'

She nodded. 'I can have Sophie do it before she heads out for the day. It's nothing she doesn't already know, either because I told her or because she's incredibly good at snooping around.' Her brow furrowed. 'That sounds like I think it's a bad thing, but I'm actually pretty impressed.'

'No,' James shook his head. 'I got it.'

They were quiet for a minute.

'But, so,' James ran a hand through his hair to brush it back off his face. 'How are you? Really?'

Lily smiled, but it was flat, detached. Not at all like her genuine smiles. 'I'm fine. Just bloody burnt out, aren't I?'

'Are you sure you're alright?'

'Why wouldn't I be?'

'Lily, they almost… _mind-controlled you_ —'

'Oh,' she chuckled, the sound dark and bitter, 'they weren't going to Imperius me.'

It took a second for him to fully grasp her meaning, but as soon as it clicked —

His stomach bottomed out.

He was sure he looked absolutely horrified.

'Lily —'

She waved her hand. 'It's fine. They weren't successful. Obviously.' She gestured down at herself and smiled sardonically.

'But — they —'

'It's not the first attempt on my life, James.'

She said it so easily, like it was the most obvious thing in the world and he was ridiculous for making anything of it and he — his brain couldn't catch up with the sick feeling in his gut and he —

'They were going to kill you.' It fell out of him in a rush, like a hard exhale after a punch in the gut, and he sounded a little traumatised, like a frightened child, and he didn't care, not a bit, because he felt, exactly, like a terrified child just then.

Lily breathed a laugh, but it was hard. Sarcastic. Protective. 'They really don't like me.'

'I —' He shook his head in hopes of clearing it and generating at least one coherent thought. 'Lily, are you okay?'

She shook her head dismissively and half shrugged. 'I'm fine.'

He sighed. 'Lily —'

She shook her head, more firmly this time, and held up her hand. 'Don't. I know. Okay? I know.'

'What do you know?'

'You —' She threw up her hands. 'You want me to open up. Talk to you about — how I'm feeling and how I'm scared and how I have no idea what I'm doing. And — James, I want to, but — I can't. Not right now. I have to —' She broke off and pulled in a deep, slightly shuddering breath as she consciously lowered her hands back to her sides. 'I have to keep it together. I won't do that if I start to let pieces out. I'll collapse completely.'

James reached over and took her hand — her fingers immediately wound through his, her grip tight. James stepped closer and put his free hand on her jaw. Brushed his thumb along the apple of her cheek.

'You won't collapse,' he said. 'You're —' He breathed a laugh. 'Lily, you're a fucking badass.'

She laughed, the sound slightly more watery than usual. He smiled and ran his finger along the curve of her jaw.

'It's okay to be vulnerable,' he said. 'But I get it. The minute you let yourself open up, you start waiting for someone to use it against you because they _always _fucking do.

'But, Lily, I'm never going to use it against you.' He hoped she could feel the meaning behind those words because he meant them more than he could even begin to say. 'If you need to be a little vulnerable, you can always do it with me.'

Lily smoothed her free hand up his stomach, over his chest, before she looped her fingers around the back of his neck.

'I'm just afraid I won't stop,' she said. 'Like once I open the valve, it's over for me.'

James shook his head. 'It'll never be over for you.'

Her expression softened a touch further, but when she spoke, she danced clear around their current line of conversation. 'For having been shouting at one another a few minutes ago, we're certainly quite close at the moment.'

James chuckled and moved a little closer, dropping her hand so he could wrap it around her waist and press her against him. Her fingers slid up into the hair at the base of his neck and her eyes darkened just a touch and he drew in a slow, even breath because, all of a sudden, he was fairly sure that he was going to pass out.

But then Lily spoke and James' chest ached for an entirely different reason.

'I'm terrified,' she said. She dropped her gaze for a moment, traced a slow line across his shoulders, before she looked back up at him. 'I've had these threats before, but this is the closest call I've had outside of my Auror work where, you know, you sort of accept that you could die at any moment.'

She breathed a laugh and twisted her free hand in the fabric of his shirt just above his hip.

'They're more powerful than we expected. They're doing things we didn't expect. And it was one thing, you know, when it was murders and that was — that was terrible and I don't want to make it sound like it wasn't — but assassinating me? That's — that's on a new level and —' She took a deep breath. 'We weren't expecting that. And maybe we should've been but it hadn't unfolded like this last time — it was just a murder campaign last time — and I —'

She closed her eyes and took another deep, slow breath. She loosened her grip on his shirt and smoothed her hand out over his stomach before she slid it up to rest on his chest, directly over his heart.

'I'm worried about what's coming. I'm worried I won't be enough to stop it. I'm worried that we won't be able to anticipate them or that they'll get so far ahead of us that we won't be able to do anything but play catch up. I'm worried more people will die and it'll be my fault because I'm not enough to stop this. I'm worried about a million things all the time and I hate that I'm letting them make me feel like this because they've made me feel like this for enough of my life and I know that I'm better than them and I want to _believe it _and —

'I know, honestly, that we're doing everything that we can. But I worry, _constantly_, that it's not enough.'

James shook his head slightly before he leant down and pressed his forehead against hers.

'We're all doing everything we can. You're doing _everything _you can.' He trailed his fingertips along the underside of her jaw and Lily hummed softly as her eyes fluttered closed. 'It'll be enough.'

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**see you tomorrowwwwww**

**(and find me on tumblr if you want - same username x)**


	17. Chapter 17

**Happy Sunday, my friends! I hope you have a lovely, lovely week and I'll see you next week with some more chapters xx**

**(and I realised today, by the way, that there are only three more weekends of posting left! What?! HOW ARE WE HERE ALREADY)**

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Lily kept her word about maintaining a steady stream of contact as things continued over the next few weeks.

Well, maybe more accurately, Sophie kept Lily's word for her.

At first Sophie asked her what kind of things she should be including or how they should be written — 'Do you want a more narrative structure? Okay, how many bullet points? How much detail?' — but after the first few days, Sophie had enough of a sense of what Lily was looking for that she didn't ask anymore.

And knowing that James was getting the information he wanted — even if Sophie's note, as it occasionally was, was just _nothing new to report_ — without Lily having to make those extra moments of time in her day? Without making her to do list one item longer?

She was incredibly appreciative of Sophie. Every day, but especially recently.

Sophie and Remus were the only people keeping her head on straight these days.

Because even when nothing happened — nothing new, anyway — the constant energy Lily was exerting just thinking about the next thing, the next attack, the next big plot...

It was fucking exhausting.

But she kept her head down. She worked. She worked until she'd ground herself down, until she was sure there was going to be nothing left.

Except there was always something more she could give. She could always write one more letter. Read one more report. Give one more interview.

She knew she was burning the candle at both ends, but things got worse, steadily worse, over the next few weeks and she couldn't bring herself to take a break when she knew that everyone else around her was struggling to keep up.

Another Muggleborn student was attacked at the Hogsmeade visit in mid-May.

Thom Connors, a Muggleborn who'd been working at the Ministry since he'd graduated a few years ago and was particularly outspoken, especially about recent events, disappeared.

James wrote her a note at the end of May asking her to send Circe to Number 10 because he had 'something she needed to read' — he sent back a (shockingly, unredacted) report from the NCA that, despite hammering home the fact that there was very, _very _little evidence in any of these cases, had developed estimated timelines and maps for all the attacks (something the Auror Office had done weeks ago), and — and Lily had had to sit down at her desk at this one — had found a new witness to the bookstore fire.

_'It looked like a flamethrower or something,' J. Nguyen said. 'The fire just came out of nowhere.'_

There were some good details in that interview, though — like the description of the attacker that sounded quite familiar — and she forwarded the relevant details to Moody's office before she scribbled out a note of thanks and, after duplicating the report for future reference, she sent it back to James.

And she was just starting to feel like they were getting a handle on things again — a feeling that she knew, _knew, _was a dangerous one — when, in the second week of June, Arthur Weasley was attacked as he was coming into work. He was alright — save a few cuts and bruises — and he managed to stun the guy so he could be arrested, but still.

It was bringing things in even closer so it felt like the circle around them was closing in. Like they were getting closer and closer all the time.

The feeling had her constantly on edge. Not paranoid, because paranoia implied a certain amount of madness, but just… tense. Constantly expecting the next thing.

Which maybe sounded a little paranoid, but it wasn't paranoid when the next thing was literally always just around the damn corner.

The tone of the attacks shifted as they moved through June into July. Connors' disappearance and Arthur's attack were the first signal of things to come. The attacks on Muggles effectively ceased — there were still a few more minor things, like attacks in the street and other things they'd seen in the very early days — and, instead, they focused their energies on attacking the Ministry more directly.

It became, much more centrally, a battle for power. An attempt to wrest control from the Ministry as it stood, to instal their own leaders who would lend a sense of legitimacy to the things they were doing.

It wasn't likely to happen, not if Lily had anything to say about it, but she couldn't deny that this recent shift in strategy had been an effective one.

Because they tied their policy into things that were already floating around at the Ministry — policies that Dolores had proposed, the initial antipathy around Muggle-centred issues that had come from people like Crouch — and though they didn't find themselves a lot of support, they found enough people in the Ministry who were willing to say, "well, I don't support attacking people, obviously, _but —_"

And it was a predictable set of people trotting that out, but it didn't make it any easier to deal with.

Especially because, once it was painted in a different light, the policies themselves — anti-Muggle, anti-Muggleborn as they were — found enough champions within the Ministry that the movement found just the kind of legitimacy that it was after.

Despite the attempts to legitimise and, later, codify their positions into the legal system (attempts Amelia resisted at every turn, work that Lily was increasingly grateful for), though, the pureblood terrorists still carried on with their attacks whenever they could manage them.

And, true, they were smaller in scale and, true, they were more minor in terms of severity, but Lily had a deeply rooted, terrified feeling in her gut that she couldn't quite explain.

She knew it wasn't over. She knew there was something massive on the horizon and she didn't know what it would be or when it would come, but she could feel it. It was there, heavy in the back of her mind, and she would've tried to brush it off, to ignore it, but, one, she knew better than to ignore her gut feelings, and, two, Moody agreed with her.

And while that fact was comforting in its own way, it didn't exactly help mitigate her paranoia.

She was sitting in her office late one Monday afternoon — she was meant to be reading through the monthly report from the Department of Magical Creatures and, really, she should have been a bit more invested, but she just couldn't be bothered today — when there was a soft knock on the door.

She sniffed quickly, sat up straight, and wiped the exhaustion out of her eyes.

'Come in.'

The door opened a crack and Sophie stuck her head through.

'Minister,' she sounded a bit more rushed than usual and Lily tried her best not to immediately get her back up in alarm, 'Mr Moody is here for you. He doesn't have an appointment, but he'd like to request an urgent meeting.'

Her throat immediately tightened, but Lily did everything she could to keep it from showing on her face. She waved her wand to send the kettle into the fire as she stood and nodded at Sophie.

'Of course. Send him in. Thank you, Sophie.'

Sophie nodded once before she left the room, pulling the door closed until just a sliver of light was visible from the main office outside. Lily closed the report she'd been reading and searched through the piles on her desk to find a clean piece of paper and, as Sophie knocked again and slid the door open, grabbed a pen from the cup in the corner.

'Moody,' Lily said, tipping her head at him in greeting. 'Tea?'

Moody shook his head, but Lily inclined her head towards the kettle in the fire as she sat. 'Sure? I'm already brewing one up for myself.'

Moody shrugged one shoulder and sat heavily in the chair opposite Lily's desk. 'Go on, then.'

She waved her wand and a pair of mugs began preparing themselves on the windowsill behind her.

'So.' Lily leant back in her chair and raised an eyebrow. 'Have I got reason to panic or is this just an urgent social call?'

Moody breathed a gruff laugh and Lily's mouth almost quirked up in a smile.

'"Panic" seems a bit extreme,' Moody said, 'but I'm certainly not here on a social call. Though, I've got good news this time, so I suppose that's something.'

The kettle began softly whistling then and Lily waved her wand so it floated gently across the office and poured a measure of water into both of their mugs. She summoned the mugs, along with the small pitcher of milk and the sugar bowl, and she and Moody set quietly for a moment preparing their tea.

Lily looked up at him as she stirred her tea and tapped her spoon lightly against the side of her mug. 'Lay it on me, then.'

Moody took a tentative sip of his tea and pulled a face — probably because the tea was still piping hot — and sighed.

'Which would you like first?'

Lily laughed this time, a soft, "you really should know the answer to this" laugh. 'The bad news. Always begin with the bad news.'

And while normally the fact that Moody tended to just jump straight into things was something that she admired, this time, this particular piece of bad news could probably have done with a bit of fluffing before he laid it out on the table.

'Kingsley said there's been suspicious activity around Number 10 recently,' Moody said. He held Lily's gaze and it was, honestly, probably the only thing that kept her sitting upright in her chair.

'Did he say what kind?' Her mouth was painfully dry and she took a sip of her tea. It was too hot, it wasn't strong enough yet, but she didn't care — she relished the heat in her throat and having something to do with her hands.

Her hand was trembling, just slightly, but she was sure that Moody noticed. She set her cup down and rested her hand on the desk, pressing each one of her fingertips lightly into the wood and willing her nerves to settle.

Moody nodded. 'He wasn't clear on what they were doing,' he said. 'He's fairly sure that they were scoping the area. And they were definitely wizards,' he added, as though Lily were going to question him on it. 'They didn't even bother to try and dress like Muggles.'

She shook her head and scoffed under her breath. 'Of course they fucking didn't.'

Moody, apparently, didn't have anything to say to that, because he just took a sip of his tea.

Lily took a deep breath. 'So — I mean, what did Kingsley say? Is the threat — what's the plan? Did he arrest them?'

Moody shook his head. 'They were gone before King could get out there and it was broad daylight. There were loads of people around and,' Moody sighed. 'In the interest of avoiding having to Obliviate a street full of Muggles, he didn't think that it was worth the risk.'

Moody must have seen her ballooning with annoyance because he hastily added, 'As I said, though. They were gone before Kingsley could even get out of Number 10. He thinks he has a fairly clear ID on them, though, and we have some threads that we can follow to help rustle them up.'

'Is that my good news?' Lily tried not to sound bitter because, really, she wasn't. 'The threads?'

Moody shook his head and something in his expression lightened infinitesimally. 'No. Your good news is much better than a few threads.'

Lily quirked an eyebrow at him and, after taking another tentative sip of her tea, finally fished out her teabag. 'It better be as good as you're making it sound.'

'We know where they are.' Moody said, and Lily felt every single cell in her body freeze as she looked up and met his gaze. 'Headquarters. We got 'em, Lil.'

Lily's breath fell out of her and she set her mug down in the centre of her desk so she didn't drop it accidentally.

'Are you sure?'

'Deadly. Longbottom —' Moody shook his head, a proud smile tugging at the corners of his lips. 'Longbottom is a fucking genius. I see an Order of Merlin in his future.'

'His very immediate future if what you're saying is true,' Lily said. She was already penning the award speech in her head.

Moody nodded. 'Believe me. It is.'

Lily raised her eyebrows. 'Let's hear it, then.'

'They've got a house in Aftdown,' Moody said. 'About fifteen miles outside Leeds. It's a small village, mostly magical, but a few Muggles have moved in over the years, though,' Moody quirked an eyebrow, 'it's getting something of a reputation as a "strange little town" of late.'

Lily exhaled. 'I can imagine.'

Moody nodded. 'Right. So some of the non-magical people have been leaving. When it's been possible.'

'How do you know they're headquartered there?'

'Longbottom has been pouring over those NCA reports that Potter's been sending over, because he was convinced that there was something there we hadn't seen, even if it was the same evidence presented differently, and,' Moody shook his head, a wry smile on his face. 'Damn if he wasn't right. There was a mention in the report from earlier this month about Aftdown — it wasn't connected to any of the attacks, but a witness came forward to say that someone in the pub was talking about the attacks like they were all related, something that hadn't been made public in the Muggle community.'

Lily hummed and shook her head. 'Rookie mistake.'

Moody tipped his head. 'Exactly. And so Longbottom took it upon himself to run a visit. He wasn't able to see much his first time there — it was midday and no one was out — but he made subsequent visits, stopped by the pub, and, after his fifth visit, he spotted Goyle. And Goyle, fucking idiot, led him right to the house, and he was able to drop a few bugs —'

'Holy shit,' Lily breathed.

'I know. He got a lot of information. Admissible information. So between that and the number of people coming and going….' Moody shook his head. 'We're positive. This is the centre.'

Lily let those words, the significance of them, wash over her for a moment. After a minute, she took another sip of her tea and straightened just a bit in her chair.

'What's the plan?'

The corner of Moody's mouth twitched like he was going to smile, but he just took a deep breath and mimicked her more formal posture.

'We've got a bit of planning to do — we've got eyes on them in the meantime, but I reckon we'll need a few weeks to pull everything together so this goes off without a hitch. I've put Longbottom in charge of assembling his team and I —'

'I want to be on the team.' The words were out of her mouth before she even knew she was going to say them, but she knew that she meant them.

Moody looked perplexed. 'What do you mean?'

'I want to be on the team,' she said again. 'Longbottom's. I want to go in.'

'Lily —'

Lily shook her head. 'I know what you're going to say. And I don't care. And maybe that's reckless —'

Moody cocked an eyebrow at her. 'What am I going to say?'

'That I'm the Minister? That I needn't involve myself to this level? That it's risky and stupid and ill advised —'

Moody nodded, a slight smirk curling one side of his mouth. 'Yes. All of the above.'

'I know,' Lily said. She leant forward and pressed her elbows into the desk. 'I know that I don't have to, but —' She held his gaze, her expression fierce. 'Moody, I _have _to.'

Moody held her gaze for a long moment, considering her. And Lily knew he wanted to ask questions, knew he wanted to press her to expand on it, but one of the things she appreciated about Moody, one of the things she'd always appreciated about Moody, was that he understood her motivations without her even having to expound on them.

He understood just what it meant to her, this fight. He understood what it would mean to her to be involved in it. Directly.

Moody tipped his head towards her just slightly. 'Alright then. I'll let Longbottom know.'

They spent another hour or so going through the particulars of the other plans that Moody was putting in place — monitoring additional individuals of interest, setting up more Aurors around Number 10, creating a map of smaller store houses that they'd raid over the next few weeks in the build up.

It was a lot of pieces to fit together and even more moving parts and it was complicated as hell, but Lily had always loved this part of the job. The challenge of fitting everything together, of coming up with a plan that, you hoped, would carry you through things relatively unscathed.

It was gone five by the time Moody left her office — a decent time, all things considered — and after Lily said goodnight to Sophie and then, a few minutes later, to Remus, she sat back behind her desk and started pulling her thoughts together.

She hadn't told either of them that she was planning on essentially becoming an Auror again.

She'd tell them tomorrow. Or the next day.

She'd tell them.

Right now, though, she needed to tell James.

And so she got up from her desk and crossed the office, and she saw Ethelred in the corner looking at her — he rolled his eyes and so she knew, even though he didn't say anything, that he knew she was going to James' office again — and she was about to just step forward and grab a bit of Powder and go, but she was a few feet from the grate when something caught in her chest and she just —

She stood staring at the fire for a long time.

Because going and seeing him — she wasn't ready for what it would mean.

Well, she was ready for everything that was going to go come after. She was ready to walk into this and she already anticipated all the objections — Remus, who would worry for her safety, Amelia who'd tell her she needn't take on this role — and she was prepared, as prepared as she could be, to walk into this.

The Auror training she'd had so long ago had resurfaced almost effortlessly and she could feel it — the awareness, the strength, the power — tingling under her skin.

She was prepared for the part that, to most people, would be the impossible part. The part that sent her charging into some kind of den with as much intel as they could gather, which was always a sizeable amount but never enough.

She was alright putting her life on the line.

That was probably something she should examine.

But no, the part of this that was troubling her, the part that was plaguing her, was the part she was getting ready to force herself through.

The part where she stepped out of that grate in Number 10 and she looked James in the eye and she told him that she'd be disappearing for a while.

The part where she told him just enough that she knew he'd worry but not enough to let him worry as much as he ought.

It wasn't lying, right, if you were doing it to protect someone?

She took a deep breath — a full, round breath that filled her lungs — and pulled her shoulders back.

She was Lily bloody Evans.

She was a badass.

She could do this.

Hard as it was, she could do this.

She took one more breath, tipped her chin up almost defiantly, before she stepped forward, grabbed a pinch of Floo Powder out of the jar on the mantelpiece and tossed it into the fire.

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**I hope you have a lovely week! xx**


	18. Chapter 18

**so I'm going on a bit of a mini break this weekend and, per my usual travel rules, not bringing my laptop. So I've decided to give you these chapters a bit early. Enjoy! :)**

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James was waiting by the fire when Lily stepped out a moment later.

He smiled at her, beamed, and stepped forward before she could even pull off her cloak.

'Hi.' He dropped a quick kiss to her lips and he felt her mouth curl into a smile against his. 'How're you?'

She was smiling when he pulled back, though there was something off about her expression — he couldn't quite put his finger on it, the difference. Maybe it was the slight shadow to her eyes, the more guarded set to her features...

He couldn't quite put his finger on it.

'Hi.' Her smile widened as she spoke, and though it didn't completely alleviate his concerns, it was enough to at least set them on the back burner for the moment.

'Can I get you a cuppa?' He stepped back and watched as Lily pulled her wand out of her pocket and began to siphon ash off herself. She scanned her eyes over him and clicked her tongue, smiling again.

'Shit, I've got ash on you. Hold still.'

She waved her wand over him and the sensation — it was like a tiny hoover was moving over his clothes and she laughed at the look on his face.

'Weird, eh?'

He nodded. 'Mad. But,' he looked down at himself as she tucked her wand back into her jacket and slid her cloak off her shoulders, 'effective.'

She grinned. 'Magic. And I'd love a cuppa, by the way.' Her smile softened. 'Thank you for offering.'

James nodded and, unable to stop himself, he swept forward again and pressed another kiss to her lips. He'd intended it to be quick, a peck, but she'd inhaled sharply when their lips met and her hand had jumped up and she'd woven her fingers through the hair at the base of his neck, and well —

How was he supposed to resist?

She nipped at his lower lip lightly with her teeth and he slid one hand underneath her blazer, his fingertips brushing against the hem of her trousers. Her shirt was tucked in, but — she smiled against his lips when she realised what he was up to — it wasn't difficult to tug at least a _bit _of the fabric up so that he could slide his fingers against her skin.

She sighed into his mouth as his skin found hers and stepped closer to him, her other hand moving from his neck to his chest. She twisted the fabric up in her hand and pulled him closer, and he groaned as she fitted against him.

There was an edge to this kiss, he could feel it in the slightly more aggressive way that she was moving her hands over him, and though he'd started puzzling over it in the back of his mind, his body didn't at all mind the way that she was handling him.

In fact, he could _definitely_ get used to this.

Still —

He pulled back and rested his forehead against hers, his thumb brushing lightly across her jaw as he tried his best to regain his balance. They were both panting slightly and it would be so easy — _so easy _— to slide her jacket off her shoulders, unbutton her trousers, walk her back towards his desk….

But that look was back in her eyes — underneath the fact that she was, very obviously, turned on, there was still that slightly guarded look to her. The one that made him think this was as much a distraction for her as it was her genuinely wanting to be with him.

He took a deep breath and threaded his fingers lightly through her hair, his movements softer now, less urgent. 'I missed you.' He slid his fingertips down her neck and she shivered slightly. 'I never realise just how much until you're here again.'

She stepped into him, her hands spreading across his back and pulling him harder against her.

'I missed you, too.' Her voice was tight and there was a slight tremor there that made James' chest ache. 'I've missed you so much.'

There was a moment where he thought that she might kiss him again, where she might drag him back under and distract him — not that, really, he'd be complaining — but instead, she pressed herself up onto her toes and buried her face into his neck. He felt her inhale hard against his skin and he buried his hands in her hair and pressed her tight against him.

They were getting there, then.

He still didn't know what, exactly, this was about, but this — they were getting there.

He held her for a minute, his hands moving from her hair to trace long, soothing lines over her back, before she pulled back and looked at him.

And he knew, from the sad, almost vulnerable look on her face, that he wasn't going to like where this was headed.

'James —'

Her voice shook and she sucked in a breath as she straightened her shoulders. She tipped her chin up slightly — and _god _wasn't that so familiar — before she took another small step back and injected a bit of space between them.

'James, we've got to talk.'

He inhaled.

Softly. Slowly.

He didn't know what this was about yet — though his mind was already starting to whip up all sorts of possibilities — and he was not going to overreact.

He exhaled.

'Guess I'll put the kettle on then, eh?'

They were silent as James moved over to the cart in the corner of his office and began preparing their tea. They were never silent, not like this, hadn't been from the moment she'd walked into his office eighteen months ago and nearly burned Number 10 to the ground with her showing off, and the weight of it felt heavy between them.

It was tense. Not awkward, exactly, but thick. Like he was wading through treacle — it was clinging to his muscles and dragging him down.

He gave their mugs a quick stir before he turned — she was sitting patiently, her legs crossed at the ankles, her hands folded neatly in her lap, and an even expression on her face, in her armchair along the wall opposite his desk. She smiled softly at him as he handed her her mug.

'Thank you.' Her voice was quiet, and he ran his eyes over her as she took a tentative sip.

'Of course.'

He settled into the chair beside her and they drank their tea quietly for a few moments. He could tell that she was turning something over in her head — her brow was furrowed and her eyes were slightly unfocused and he _knew _that she was trying to figure out what to say — and though, on any other day he might have pushed her, might have tried to get her to just say the first thing that popped into her head….

There was something about this evening. There was something about the look on her face.

After a minute, she set her mug down on her knee and turned slightly in her seat to look at him.

'James?'

He set his mug down on his thigh. 'Hmm?'

'I'm going to disappear for a while.'

That….

Hadn't been what he was expecting.

He exhaled.

'I'll be back,' she added hastily — he must have had some kind of look on his face because she looked a bit anguished now. 'I just — things have —'

She paused and let her eyes fall closed, an aggravated exhale falling out of her. She pressed her lips together before she opened her eyes and met his gaze again.

'Things have escalated. Quickly.'

He nodded.

'We've had a breakthrough in the investigation. I'm —' she shook her head, a slightly awed look on her face, 'I'm so impressed, actually, because — I mean it was impossible to get anything out of anyone, but we've finally had a breakthrough. We think we know where they're headquartered. The people responsible for these attacks.'

She paused like she was waiting for him to say something, but James' mouth had gone all dry.

He swallowed hard and nodded. 'Great. That's —' He swallowed again. 'That's brilliant.'

She studied him for a moment before she nodded slowly. 'Yeah. Like I said, I'm shocked we're here, actually.'

'Me, too.'

'It was because of you,' she added. 'Your investigation.' James' brow furrowed and she clarified. 'Frank Longbottom, the Auror who's been running these investigations, has been pouring over your reports. And he noticed a few details that your investigations had turned up that we hadn't noticed before. He followed up on it and,' she spread her hands out in front of him like she was revealing something to him. 'Here we are.'

He had half a mind to start with the _I told you so_s, but he knew that that wasn't going to be productive, so he bit his tongue. Instead, he just exhaled hard and shook his head. 'Holy shit.'

'I know. The network they'd built —' She shook her head, her gaze going to the ceiling for a moment before she looked at him again. 'It was impressive. I'll give them that.'

They were quiet for a moment before she cleared her throat.

'I've spoken with Moody and let him know that I'll be joining the team of Aurors when they move in for the raid. If the current plan holds, it's a few weeks off — the Auror office is of the opinion that we should try and smoke out a few of the lower level targets. Caches of things, smaller safe houses, that sort of thing.'

'Is that not what you'd do?'

She tipped her head noncommittally. 'It's not the approach I'd take, no, but I see the logic behind it. You don't want some of these smaller sets to become the new headquarters once the main base is raided, you want to get a few more people into custody. I'm of the opinion that it might throw up red flags a bit earlier than we'd like, but I think that both plans have their own faults. And the Auror office is more intimately familiar with the details than I am, honestly, so I'm happy to follow their lead for now.'

James nodded slowly and exhaled against the tightening in his chest.

'So — so what's going to happen?'

She held his gaze for a long moment before she sighed. 'I don't know. I wish I could tell you more than that, but — I mean, you know how these things are. You develop the best plan you can and then you just throw it to the wall and see what sticks once you get in there.'

'I'm sure you wouldn't tell me everything even if you could,' James said. He'd muttered it — bitterly, unfairly — before he could stop himself, but he knew that the words were true even if he hadn't meant to say them.

Lily looked down at her knees and James sighed.

'I — _fuck, _Lily, I'm sorry.'

She shook her head before she looked up at him again. 'You're right, though. I was thinking about that before I came over. What I could tell you without feeling like I was giving you too much.'

'But it's — I mean, it's not fair for me to hold that against you like you're doing it on purpose,' James said. 'I know how this job is. I _know _that we both can't always tell each other everything.'

She nodded. 'No, I know you do. It's why I don't feel as bad when I hold things back.'

James didn't have anything to say to that.

Lily took a sip of her tea.

They were quiet for a minute before James took a breath. 'Why've you got to be gone completely, though? You — you'll be in England, won't you?'

She nodded. 'Mostly. I might have to go to Scotland for a while —'

'Where Hogwarts is?'

The corners of her lips twitched but she managed to catch herself before she smiled at him. She nodded again. 'Yeah.'

His brow furrowed. 'Are you going up to the school or?'

She sucked in a breath and looked away. 'I —' She looked up at the ceiling like she was looking for inspiration. 'I can't go into that. Not now. I'm sorry.'

James bit the inside of his lip and tried not to let the frustration bubbling in his gut leach out of him.

Because it wasn't fair to take it out on her — yes, she'd come here intending to tell him that she was going to disappear and _yes _she'd come here knowing that she couldn't really even tell him _anything, _but she didn't owe him an explanation that, honestly, it would be dangerous to give him.

He knew something about holding onto government secrets. He knew what happened when sensitive information leaked out and he knew that it always, _always, _seemed to leak out from the most unexpected places.

He knew why she was holding it back and, in the more reasonable part of himself, he was glad that she was being so protective. He didn't expect anything else from her, but it was still irritating as hell, seeing how tightly she was holding this information to her chest.

He lifted his mug and took a long, slow drag off his tea before he met her eyes again.

'I know. I just — I don't want to push you on this, I'm just — scared.' It didn't come close to how he was actually feeling, "scared", but it was the only word that he could think of just then.

She reached over and rested her hand on his thigh. They both watched for a moment as she spread her fingers over the leg of his trousers and rubbed his leg soothingly.

They looked up at the same time and her expression — fierce and warm and _solid _—

She would never cease to amaze him.

'I know you are. And I appreciate that you aren't using that to try and stop me.'

He breathed a laugh. 'Well, I know better than to do that. You always do something once you've set your mind to it.'

'It's just nice. Being with someone who understands that.'

'It's who you are. And, honestly, it's one of the things I love most about you.'

She smiled wryly. 'My stubbornness?'

He shook his head. 'Your determination. Your courage.' He ran his eyes over her, tried to commit the lines of her to memory, before he met her gaze again. 'You're amazing, Lily.'

She flushed high on her cheeks and looked down at her knees. He reached over, put his thumb underneath her chin, and gently tilted her head up so she was looking at him again.

'I mean it. I'm already worried out of my mind for you, but I know that, if anyone can do this, it's you.'

She held his gaze for a moment before she straightened up in her seat and tilted her head back to drain his mug before she met his gaze again. 'Okay,' she pulled her wand out of her pocket and waved it over her mug, cleaning it, before she sent it floating gently back across the office towards the cart and stood.

'I should — I've got to get back. We've got a long day tomorrow and I should —'

James nodded. 'Sleep. I got it.'

She nodded, the move a bit shakier than usual, and turned on her heel to go collect her cloak. James watched in silence as she slid her cloak on smoothly over her shoulders and then patted her abdomen absently to make sure her wand was tucked away neatly. She was avoiding looking at him, he thought — it wasn't anything obvious about the way she was moving, she was just making a little more of a to do about leaving than she usually did and he thought —

She looked up.

'I'll see ya.'

'Lily, I — be safe. Please.'

She stepped forward, took his face in her hands, ran her thumbs over his cheekbones. Her face was calm, her expression even, and though he studied her to try and detect even the slightest bit of anxiety, her jaw was set and her eyes were determined and nothing about her, _nothing, _made it seem like she wasn't ready for this. He didn't understand how she could be so calm, how she wasn't even a little bit nervous about what she could be walking back into.

It wasn't until she kissed him that he really understood.

She lifted herself up onto her toes, brought their bodies together, and pressed her lips to his, a touch firmer than she normally would've done. She took her time, moving her lips slowly, purposefully against his, and there was a subtle undercurrent to it, a difference in the way her hands were moving over him, that told him this glacial pace wasn't about driving him mad.

It was about everything happening around them. About the things that she was going to do anything to change.

He tried not to think about what _anything _could mean.

When she'd been standing before him, her eyes hard and her face set, she looked collected. Determined. Not resigned because it has the air of defeat about it, but ready. Ready to face what was coming no matter what it was. She'd slid into it, that demeanour, before he'd even blinked, and even though he was terrified for her, for the unknown, he couldn't help but be impressed by her.

It was that — her ability to straighten her spine and look challenges in the eye — that made her the leader she was.

Now that she was kissing him, though, he got a glimpse at what was going on inside her head. At the Lily she had cordoned off underneath her hard exterior. Now that she was kissing him, he could feel the slight tremor of her breath against his lips, the way her hands shook just slightly as they traced down the front of his suit jacket.

The contrast laid heavy on his chest and so he threaded his fingers in her hair and pulled her closer because he needed her to know, both sides of her, that he was ready to do whatever he could for her. That he believed in her.

He wasn't ready when she pulled back. Wasn't ready when she stepped away and tightened her cloak around her waist. He watched her hands smooth the fabric like she had that first night she'd visited him, and James felt his breath catch in his chest because he wasn't ready.

He wasn't ready to watch her walk out of there with no idea when she'd be coming back. If she'd be alright.

But it was happening either way, whether he was ready or not.

'I'll reach out as soon as it's safe.' Lily reached into her pocket and pulled out a bit of Floo Powder. 'Don't do anything until I come back here. Okay?'

He wanted to say no. To tell her that he wanted to help, that he didn't want her to go this alone. That he didn't want her to walk out that door without him.

He wanted to stop her, but he knew she would go either way. It was more a matter of _how _she would leave, what the terms would be, than whether or not she would do it. And he couldn't let her leave without knowing. It probably wasn't the right time, not for the first time, but she had to know. Before she walked into whatever she was going to walk into, he needed her to know. And maybe she'd think he was trying to get her to stay, trying to get her to let her world collapse without her there to stop it — with anyone else, James would have worried that she'd believe that, but Lily….

Lily always knew.

He took a deep breath.

'I love you.'

Maybe, in another time, it would have felt wrong not to step forward, not to sweep her up in his arms and run his hands over her as he told her he loved her. Maybe he would have tried to show her, because the words themselves didn't even scratch the surface of the things he felt for her, but this wasn't that time.

Lily could hear it in his voice, the things that he couldn't quite put into words, she could see it on his face. He knew she could because when she smiled at him, a soft, warm smile that made James' stomach ache, he could feel it, too.

'I love you, too,' she said. 'I'll see you soon.'

He hoped she might stay a bit longer, that she might step forward and kiss him again, that they might be able to take some time — a few hours, a few days — to forget about all the things she was going home to. He hoped that she might stay, but he knew her well enough to know better.

She threw her powder into the fire the moment she turned away and, without turning back, stepped into the flames.

It's been two months.

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**I'll post the other chapter when I get home from work!**

**See you in, like, two hours :)**


	19. Chapter 19

**oops okay so it was a lot longer than two hours - I got very distracted when I got home this evening. Sorry!**

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It had been okay, at first, surviving Lily's absence.

He went about his life. Red boxes. PMQs. Cabinet meetings. Other meetings. Pressers. Repeat.

There was enough to distract him during the day, enough to catch his attention, but even still, he sometimes found himself in his office late at night, papers strewn across his desk, and then he found himself thinking about what he'd do if the fire suddenly blazed green and Lily stepped out.

About how his chest would swell with relief. About how he'd rush forward, probably knocking over a chair or a mug of tea or something else in his haste, and he'd press her into him, right into his fucking skin, because good _god _he had never missed anyone as much as he missed her.

But every night, the fire burned orange.

Every night, he went to bed with her on his mind.

Every morning, he woke up and pretended that everything was alright.

Luckily he had enough to be getting on with.

The summer passed, as summers always seemed to in Westminster, in a slow, sweaty haze. They argued about the European Union — he was pretty sure that's all that some of these prats knew how to do — but they'd agreed to stay and so the country, outside of the measures they needed to negotiate to properly rejoin, had moved on and so James got to talk about other things.

He talked about the NHS. Child care. Horrifically high university fees. The need to increase local authority budgets so that libraries and local museums didn't have to carry on closing their doors.

It was a relief, honestly. Getting to talk about other things.

It reminded him of Lily, Lily's one hill, and how lucky he was to get hills, hills after his hill, and sometimes he spiralled out about that, but, mostly, it was a relief.

Because it meant that he was constantly requesting reports from his various cabinet offices and he was reading well into the night every night about all these issues that, to his mind, hadn't been given any kind of proper consideration for the last four years.

It meant that he was busy.

That he wasn't sitting at his desk staring at his fire or sitting on his sofa and looking at the book shelf, that he wasn't lying in bed staring at the ceiling and thinking about how nice it had been when Lily had last been there beside him.

He was distracted with work. It was all playing on a loop in the back of his mind, Lily and her laugh and her determined, blazing look, but he was distracted.

He was up late one night in the beginning of September reading one such report — he'd requested a thorough update on the funding for new and existing council estates from Afua, his Housing Secretary, and she'd, of course, given him a packet that was a few hundred pages thick — when he'd heard a sound he hadn't heard in ages.

The portrait across from his desk cleared his throat and James started, drawing a long, thick red line across the page he was reading with his pen.

He looked up and found Ethelred looking at him, a slightly amused expression on his face.

'The Minister for Magic would like to meet.'

James shot immediately out of his chair, a combination of surprise at the sudden interruption and frantic excitement building in his gut.

She was alright.

She was _back_.

'Yes!' He practically shouted it and Ethelred didn't look even remotely amused at being addressed thus. But James didn't care, he didn't care.

He ran around his desk and stood in front of the fire.

His hands were shaking.

The fire plumed up into a blaze of green and even though the brightness of it burned his eyes, he didn't dare look away.

Lily was — she —

A body appeared in the fireplace, a tall, too big body, and James' heart immediately rocketed into this throat.

This wasn't Lily. It wasn't Lily.

_It wasn't Lily. _

'Who the hell are you?'

The man, tall and lean with sandy blonde hair, laughed and stooped a bit as he stepped out of the grate. He caught James' eye as he pulled a wand out of the interior pocket of his jacket and started to siphon off the ash.

'I heard you might say something like that,' he said. He was smiling — not brightly, not enthusiastically, but softly. Like James had confirmed something for him.

'Okay, so?' James knew he sounded slightly hysterical, but he didn't care. He'd spent months, _months, _pretending that he wasn't always on the verge of anxious tears and he couldn't sound like this in any other place in his whole fucking life — not on the floor of the Commons, not when he was in his fucking meetings, not when he was on the news, _nowhere _— and god damn it, he was going to break down in his own office if he bloody well wanted to.

'Who are you? Where's Lily?'

The man sighed, but still didn't say anything. He looked down to check that he'd gotten all the ash off his suit before he opened his jacket and slipped his wand back inside.

James watched his slow, even movements and tried to control to tide of anger and panic rising in his chest.

'I'm Remus Lupin,' the man said at last. 'I'm the acting Minister for Magic.'

Oh, god.

James reached over and grasped the arm of the chair nearest him.

'Acting —'

He couldn't breathe. _He couldn't breathe_.

'Lily's alright,' Remus added hurriedly. 'I probably should've led with that.'

He at least had the decency to look sorry when James levelled a glare at him.

'Yeah,' James snapped. He'd sucked in a sharp breath and the rush of oxygen to his brain made him a little lightheaded. 'I reckon you should've done.'

Remus cleared his throat. 'Sorry. I — didn't think.'

James exhaled hard and pinched the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up a bit. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed — she was alright, she was alright, she was alright — before he opened his eyes and adjusted his glasses.

'It's been a stressful few months,' he said. He was surprised he'd started here, the vulnerable place, but then, he probably shouldn't have been. He was always a little disarmed whenever it came to Lily.

Remus nodded slowly. 'I can imagine.'

'But— Lily. She — she's alright?'

'Yes. Well, she's still in hospital —'

'"Still"?' James exhaled hard against the anger stewing in his gut. 'How long has she been in hospital? Why am I just hearing about this _now_?'

Remus, to his credit, didn't seem the least bothered by James' outrage. 'About a fortnight. She — wasn't in any state to be seen until recently.'

'I'd like to have been there,' James snapped. 'I'd like to have known that she wasn't — fucking dead in a ditch or something. I've been here, winding myself up, thinking of increasingly terrible things that could've happened to her and — a fortnight ago, she —'

His voice was now trembling so much that he was sure Remus couldn't understand him. He broke off and turned hard on his heel and began pacing short lines in front of his desk to burn off a bit of his energy.

'I —' Remus cleared his throat, but James didn't bother looking up at him. 'I could make us a cup of tea.'

James froze and glared at Remus again. 'No. No. I don't want any bloody tea. I want to go see her. Right now.'

'I —' Remus sighed before he tipped his chin up just a bit higher like he was bracing himself. 'I'm not sure that you'll be allowed in, Prime Minister.'

James shook his head quickly. 'I don't accept that. I'm sorry, but I don't. She's —' His throat tightened and he faltered. He looked up at the ceiling and blinked back the tears that had formed in the corners of his eyes before he met Remus' gaze again. 'I _have_ to see her.'

Remus just looked at him for a moment before he exhaled heavily. 'Alright. Are you able to call a car at this hour?'

James nodded shakily — the relief flooding through him was making his entire body shake — and stepped over to his desk, grabbed his phone off the base, and dialled the security office.

They picked up on the first ring. 'This is Gavin.'

'Gavin.' James sounded slightly panicked and he took a slow, quiet breath and cleared his throat. 'Could I get a car, please? Something's come up and I've got to leave right away.'

'Of course, sir. I'll meet you in the entry.'

James nodded. 'Great. I've got a colleague with me. He'll be joining us.'

If Gavin was surprised by this, he didn't let on. 'Of course. I'll see you shortly.'

'Thanks, Gavin.'

'My pleasure, sir.'

James set the phone back down on the base and looked at Remus. 'They're pulling the car round. We're to meet them in the entry.'

Remus nodded.

'Who should I tell them you are?'

Remus looked at James for a moment, an almost pitying look on his face. James frowned at him and Remus cleared his throat.

'It won't really matter. I'm going to have to wipe their memories once we've arrived at the hospital.'

James didn't have anything to say to that. He just stared a Remus for a moment before Remus continued.

'They'll have to wait outside for you, won't they? They'll see us go in, they'll meet me, they might see some weird things on the pavement while they wait — it's best for all involved. I know you aren't keen on it, and, honestly, I'm not either, but we haven't really got options. I'll give them an alternate memory of this evening, so if you've got suggestions….'

James shook his head, a slightly dazed look on his face. 'I — no, I — I'll think about it.'

Remus nodded. 'Should we go?'

James stepped forward and grabbed his jacket off the rack beside the fireplace and slid it over his arms as he crossed the office. He pulled open the door and held his hand out to indicate that Remus should go ahead of him.

Remus only looked shocked for a moment before his expression evened and he walked out of James' office.

'We'll just head straight through, then go down the stairs on the right.' James pulled the door shut behind him, patting his pockets as he went to make sure he had his mobile and his keys — he was sure he wouldn't need them and there was always someone round to let him in, but the habit was impossible to break.

He and Remus didn't talk as they walked through the house. They fell into step beside one another and walked silently through the cluttered offices and down the stairs into the entry. Gavin, true to his word, was waiting patiently, his hands clasped behind his back, at the bottom of the stairs.

'Good evening, sir.' Gavin tipped his head at James and he smiled.

'Evening, Gavin. Sorry for the late call.'

Gavin shook his head, his eyes flicking towards Remus for only a moment before he met James' gaze again. 'Nevermind, sir. It's what we're here for.'

James nodded. 'Still. I'm grateful. This is Remus, by the way. He's — an old uni friend.'

If Gavin noticed James' slight pause, he didn't let on. He just extended his hand towards Remus and they shook.

'Nice to meet you, sir.'

'Likewise.'

Gavin turned to look at James again. 'Is Mr Remus accompanying us this evening?'

James nodded. 'Yes. I'm afraid this concerns another one of our old university friends, so —'

Gavin nodded and James was grateful, for about the millionth time since he'd started this job, that he knew not to press.

'Excellent. Car's out front, so if you would —' He stepped sideways and opened the front door, gesturing in front of him so that James and Remus could walk outside.

It was colder out than he'd expected — it had been sunny, actually, earlier today and it had thrown his whole perception of the weather that day — and the sky was now so thick with clouds that he couldn't see the moon. The car was idling quietly in the drive, the headlamps off so as not to draw attention, and James started quickly across the pavement.

He opened the door and gestured for Remus to climb inside. Remus slid in, James immediately behind him, and Gavin shut the door behind them before he got into the front seat.

'Good evening, sir.' The driver caught James' eye in the rearview mirror and James grinned at him.

'Evening, Sam. Sorry for the late hour.'

'No apologies necessary, sir. Where can I take you this evening?'

He hadn't — _fuck _— he hadn't thought to ask Remus before they left. He turned and looked at Remus, who cleared his throat and leant forward a bit in his seat.

'Purge and Dowse. Charing Cross Road.'

James raised an eyebrow at him — that place hadn't been open in a decade at least — but if Sam found it a strange instruction, he didn't let on.

He just nodded and said, 'Certainly, sir,' before he flicked the headlamps on and started out of the drive.

The anxiety started building in James' gut as they drove along Whitehall. No one was speaking — he thought, at first, that he liked the silence, but as they went through the roundabout at Trafalgar Square and started onto Charing Cross Road, he thought that the silence was starting to drive him a little mad.

He couldn't stop himself from turning over every awful thing if he was sitting there without something to distract him.

Because Remus had said that she'd been in hospital for a fortnight — a bloody _fortnight _— before she'd been alright enough for him to see her. Nevermind his anger about that — he wanted to be there, no matter how bad she'd been, to hold her hand and tell her that she'd be alright and he would have wasted away in that chair with her if he'd had to — he now found himself, as they drove along the surprisingly quiet street, thinking about everything that that meant.

That she'd been so injured he hadn't been allowed to visit.

It was taking more effort than he anticipated, keeping his mind from whipping up all sorts of terrible scenarios.

Sam pulled the car off to the side of the road a minute later and switched off the engine.

'We're here, sir.'

James nodded and glanced up at Remus for confirmation that this, this long deserted department store, was, indeed, where they were supposed to be. Remus tipped his head at him in the slightest nod and James smiled at Sam in the mirror.

'Perfect, thank you, Sam. If you both could just stay here, I'll be back shortly.'

'Sir,' Gavin turned and looked at him, his expression slightly pained. 'Sir, I — I'm sorry, but I can't let you go in there alone.' There was a slightly admonitory tone to his voice, a _you know better than this, surely, _and James cleared his throat.

He hadn't even anticipated this. He really should've done, but he was just so anxious about seeing Lily that he hadn't even thought about this eventuality.

He smiled placatingly. 'I understand, Gavin, but I'm afraid Remus and I don't want to draw further attention to ourselves.'

Gavin was quiet for a moment and James could see him trying to work out what to say next. He knew that he was putting Gavin in a horrible position and James normally would never have done it, made Gavin assert his authority like this — James'd been more than happy to have Gavin and everyone else from Security following him around everywhere and, true, it was massively inconvenient and it could be incredibly frustrating, but he knew that they were there for a reason and he wasn't going to actively make their jobs more difficult — but he really didn't have a choice this evening.

He didn't even know what he was about to walk into.

And he was sure that a magical hospital couldn't be _that _different from a normal hospital, but god knows the kinds of things that would be going on in there.

Remus was already going to have to alter their memories — something that James was incredibly uncomfortable about — and he didn't want to have to give Remus any more to erase if he could help it.

'Sir,' Gavin began, and James could tell from the tone of his voice that there really was going to be no movement on this issue. 'Sir, I'm afraid that I really can't let you go unaccompanied.'

And James didn't like it, what he did then. Didn't like it at all.

But it was Lily and —

He didn't like it. But it had to be done.

He looked at Remus, raised his eyebrow just slightly, and muttered, 'Is there something that you can do?'

Remus didn't even hesitate.

He nodded, just the slightest tip of the head, and pulled his wand smoothly out of the inside of his cloak, and Gavin, too busy looking at James, didn't notice.

Remus didn't say anything, just waved his wand very slightly, and there was a burst of soft white sparks and Gavin's head, followed very quickly by Sam's, slumped back against the seat.

Remus slipped his wand back inside his cloak and James looked between Gavin and Sam before he turned to Remus. 'They're — they're alright? Right? I — _fuck._'

Remus waved his hand. 'They're fine. I've just put them in a bit of a trance. They're having a kip.'

'And they're alright? Like they won't remember it or be hurt or?'

Remus looked at him very seriously, then. 'Prime Minister. I promise you. They're alright.'

James took a deep breath. 'Alright. And, please. Just James.'

Remus studied him for a moment before he said, 'Of course,' and reached over to put his hand on the door handle. 'Ready?'

James nodded and Remus clicked open the door without another moment's hesitation. He stepped out, pulling the door wider so that James could follow him.

James looked back at Gavin and Sam for a moment before he stepped out onto the pavement and shut the door behind him.

* * *

** See you next week! Xx**


	20. Chapter 20

**Happy Saturday! I hope that this finds you well :)**

**I still haven't replied to comments from last week (sorry!) but I'm getting to it today x**

**Also - I edited chapters 20/21 together, so, head's up, after the dividing line in the middle, we're switching perspectives. **

* * *

Remus was waiting patiently for him in front of the nearly empty shop window outside Purge and Dowse. He was thankful, James was, that it was late in the evening, because he couldn't even imagine what the two of them must have looked like, standing in front of a shop that had clearly been abandoned years before.

James quirked an eyebrow at Remus. 'This is your hospital?'

Remus nodded. 'St. Mungo's, yes.'

James nodded slowly and turned to scan the shop window again. 'How're we supposed to get in there?'

He turned to look back at Remus and there was something slightly amused about his expression now. James couldn't put his finger on what it was that had changed in Remus' expression — he wasn't smiling, wasn't smirking, he looked, on the surface, completely the same — but there was something just a touch lighter about the way he was looking at James now.

Despite his clear amusement at James' confusion, Remus didn't feel that he needed to address James' query. Instead, he just stepped forward, towards the busted up dummy in the window and whispered, 'I'm Remus Lupin, acting Minister for Magic. We're here to see Lily Evans, the Minister.'

James — he looked between the dummy and Remus' face, his confusion increasing all the time because how, first of all, would that dummy hear him through the glass if he was whispering like that, especially because, even though it was late, the city was still buzzing around them, and how would the dummy hear him anyway because _it was a dummy _—

But then the dummy nodded — _nodded _— and waved them forward with a tiny movement of its hand and Remus turned and said, 'Ready?'

James didn't even have time to ask what he needed to be ready _for _before Remus stepped forward through the glass and disappeared.

He really should be used to this by now, magic, but —

He shook his head slightly and, before Remus decided to abandon him entirely, stepped through the glass.

It felt surprisingly liquid around him, like moving through thickened water, and if James expected that the hospital would be quieter than the pavement outside, he was immediately mistaken.

They appeared to be in a waiting area — there was a welcome desk in the far corner with a small queue and rows and rows of chairs throughout the space where people were waiting, some with injuries (like the man along the far wall with an elephant's trunk in place of a nose) that, to James, looked absolutely horrifying. People, staff, presumably, because they were all wearing lime green uniforms, were bustling in and out of the waiting room through a set of doors to their right, escorting some people back to other areas of the hospital.

Remus turned, once he confirmed that James had, indeed, followed him through the window, and headed towards the end of the welcome queue. They stood there quietly for a few moments, Remus watching James, James watching the staff continue to flow in and out picking up new patients.

Despite the length of the line when they'd joined the back of the queue, they were only waiting for a few seconds before they reached the front. The man behind the counter looked at James, a slightly puzzled expression on his face, before his eyes flicked to Remus.

He immediately straightened.

'Minister —'

Remus chuckled and James noticed Remus' gaze flick down to the name badge pinned on the man's chest.

'I'm just the _acting _Minister, Oliver.' Remus smiled, and it was a soft, warm, welcoming sort of smile. 'No need for formalities.'

Oliver didn't look like he knew how to respond to that. He made a few sounds, but nothing coherent emerged.

Remus, though, apparently didn't need a response because he carried briskly on. 'That said, I wanted to check in myself and Mr Potter here. He's a Muggle, but he's been granted access by the Minister.'

'Mr Lupin,' Oliver cleared his throat and looked down at his hands. 'I understand that, but, uh — Muggles aren't — aren't permitted inside the hospital unless they're here for treatment.'

'No, no, no,' Remus shook his head appeasingly. 'I understand, Oliver. But Mr Potter, here, is the muggle Prime Minister and the Minister has requested that he meet her here for an urgent meeting.'

Oliver still looked a bit hesitant, but Remus gave him a warm smile that James was sure was hiding quite a lot of strength. 'As the Minister is unable to travel herself, I'm sure you understand why Mr Potter has to meet her here.'

'I —' Oliver cleared his throat. 'Yes. Yes, of course, Mr Lupin. You know the way?'

Remus nodded. 'Yes. Thank you, Oliver. Have a lovely evening.'

Remus stepped back from the counter and started walking swiftly through the lobby towards the lifts.

Remus pressed the button for the fourth floor and the doors slid shut immediately. Neither of them spoke as they rode up — Remus was standing still, back straight, his hands clasped neatly in front of him, and James was too busy fighting the anxiety building in his throat again as they got closer to the fourth floor.

He was going to see her again.

He was going to see her again, but she'd been hurt and he had no idea what state she'd be in or what kind of state she'd _been _in before he'd been allowed, and the not knowing was killing him.

The lift dinged and the doors slid open.

This level looked, honestly, exactly like a regular hospital — there were sleek, clean tiled floors, white walls, more people in green uniforms sweeping up and down the ward making notes on clipboards. It felt familiar, oddly so, because the placard on the wall beside the nurses' station at the front read 'Spell Damage' and there were people preparing smoking goblets of things to, presumably, carry into patient rooms — it was similar enough, familiar enough, that it made the unfamiliar things feel all that much more uncanny.

As he scanned the floor, James noticed two people in black cloaks standing on either side of a door at the far end of the hall and, without thinking, he started quickly out the lift towards them. He saw Remus jog a few paces to make sure he kept up, saw Remus waving his hand dismissively at the guards — they had to be guards — because they'd starting rifling around inside their cloaks as James approached, but he didn't care if they shot some kind of spell at him, didn't care if they kicked the ever-loving shite out of him.

As long as he got to see Lily at the end of it, he didn't fucking care.

'He's with me,' Remus said, and his voice had that authoritative tone that James had heard earlier. 'Dawlish, Allingham — stand down.'

One of them, the guards, immediately dropped their hand from inside their cloak, but the other maintained intense eye contact with James as he approached. James didn't say anything — well, he muttered a 'hello' as he pushed past, but it was far less than he normally would've done — before he pushed open the door to what had to be Lily's room.

And there she was.

Jesus fucking christ, there she was.

She was sitting in bed, her glasses on, an enormous newspaper in her hands and a stack of dark red folders on her lap, and she looked — _god._

She had a few long, angry scars on her arm from what James could see and she had a cut on her cheek that was bleeding through its dressing and god _knew _what was wrong with her internally, but she was sitting up and she was reading and she was awake and _god. _

His breath fell out of him in a rush. 'Lily.'

She immediately looked up from her newspaper. 'James.'

He was across the room in three long strides.

He could feel his hand shaking as he reached up and brushed his fingers carefully along her unbandaged cheek, and he wasn't planning on doing anymore than that because he didn't know where she was hurt and he didn't want to accidentally make it worse, but she was here and she was solid and she was okay and then she reached up and pressed his hand to her cheek and all resolve he had nearly went out the window.

He leaned down and pressed his lips against hers. It was light — he was terrified of hurting her, absolutely terrified — but he exhaled when their lips met and her hand jumped up from the bed and she immediately threaded her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck.

And that, her hands in his hair, her lips against his, the reality of her —

He hadn't realised just how much he'd missed her, how worried and anxious and empty he'd been until all of a sudden she was there, filling him back up again.

He pulled back and rested his forehead against hers, exhaled hard against the emotions rolling through him. He brushed his thumb along the apple of her cheek and she breathed a laugh as she reached up and brushed the tears off his face.

'I'm —' There were too many things to say, too many things he needed her to know.

Remus cleared his throat behind them. 'I'll, uh — I'll leave you two to it. Minister —'

James straightened up, let his hand fall from her face, and Lily smiled softly at Remus over James' shoulder, a slight arch to her eyebrow. 'Remus.'

Remus held her gaze, the ghost of a smile on his face, before he took a deep, steadying breath. When he spoke, his tone was far less formal and had an almost gritty edge to it. 'Let me know if you need anything, Lil.'

Lily nodded, her smile widening the slightest bit. 'I've got everything I need,' she said softly. Her eyes flickered to James for a moment before she met Remus' gaze again. 'Thank you.'

Remus nodded once before he stepped forward and held his hand out to James. 'I wish we'd met under better circumstances,' he said, giving James' hand a firm shake. 'But I expect we'll be seeing quite a bit of each other.'

His eyes flicked to Lily over James' shoulder and James heard her breathe a laugh. James' lips twitched just a bit as they hitched up into the slightest smile.

'I expect so, too.'

They just caught Remus speaking to the security outside Lily's door before the door clicked closed behind him and the room fell completely silent. And now that they were alone, that it was just the two of them —

'Lily.' James turned back around and Lily immediately reached forward and tangled her fingers through his for a moment. She slid over in the bed towards the far edge, lifting her hips carefully up off the mattress and ignoring James' protests that, really, she needn't move and _you're going to hurt yourself, Lily, my god._

She smirked at him as she settled into her new spot on the edge of the bed and patted the free space next to her, inviting James to sit.

'I'm already hurt,' she said. 'I'm here, aren't I?' Her smile widened a touch but James just frowned at her as he sat carefully on the edge of her bed.

'That's not funny.'

Her eyes lightened as she reached forward and wound her fingers through his. 'It's a little funny.'

James shook his head and he squeezed her hand. 'I was worried sick about you.'

She immediately sobered. 'I'm sorry.'

He shook his head and looked down at their hands. Played with her fingers.

'You don't have to be sorry,' he said. He looked up at her and he wished, truly, that she could know just how much he meant it. 'You never have to be sorry for doing what you have to do. I just —'

He sucked in a sharp breath and tightened his grip on her fingers again. 'I was just so worried, Lily.'

'I was always going to come back,' she said. She opened her mouth like she was going to say something else, but she seemed to think better of it and opted to stay silent.

He wanted to frown at her, to say _you can't've known that, Lily_, but it wasn't going to do anything to snap at her about that now. Because she was here. She was here — her hand in his and the heat of her thigh against his knee confirmed as much — and as long as she was here there was no sense in losing himself to what might've been.

She was here.

And, right now, that was all that mattered.

* * *

'So,' Lily saw James look up at her out of the corner of her eye, but her gaze remained trained on the plate resting on James' knee. 'I don't know if you're ready to talk about everything, but…'

Lily'd had pudding, a bright red apparently strawberry-flavoured jelly, delivered an hour earlier and they were now poking at the remains with their spoons. Lily rolled a bit of jelly around before she scooped it up off the plate and plopped it into her mouth as she met his gaze.

'Why wouldn't I be ready?'

James shrugged and rolled a piece of jelly over with his spoon as he muttered something like _you're still in hospital and I don't know if —_

'I've been in worse states than this,' she said. She didn't tell him about the time — though she was certainly thinking about it now — that she'd been unconscious for over a month. Didn't tell him the stories behind the many, many scars she had scattered across her body.

Further traumatising him with stories about times she'd had closer brushes with death wasn't likely to take the terrified, slightly fragile look out of his eyes.

James' eyes widened a bit. 'Have you?'

She nodded and took another bite of jelly before she let her spoon fall, with a clatter, onto the plate.

'But anyway, what do you want to know? I'll tell you everything, of course, but you'll have to remind me what it is you already know.'

James nodded and sliced his spoon through a bit of jelly. He rolled it around absently before he set his spoon beside hers and moved the plate off his lap onto her bedside cabinet.

'Last I heard,' he shifted on the edge of her bed so he was sat a bit closer to her, 'was when you came to my office in July. I haven't heard anything from anyone since then. That night, you said Moody'd found their headquarters and you were going to raid it with them. After you raided a few of the smaller spots.'

Lily hummed and nodded as she leant her head back onto the pillow behind her. She closed her eyes for a moment to try and gather her thoughts, to think herself back to the beginning of the timeline.

'We raided about a dozen homes throughout England,' she said, opening her eyes. 'There was one in Wales, actually, but most all of them were in England. I didn't participate in those, outside of my usual role as Minister, because Moody didn't want word to get round that I was going to be in the field. He didn't want a bigger target on my head than the one that already existed.

'I met with Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts, over that period to further increase security at the school and to follow-up, unofficially, on some of the reports of attacks we'd been getting from within the school and the small town of Hogsmeade just down the road. We made a few more arrests on that information and those people were able to give us some information that, ultimately, helped us close in on a few more safe houses.'

She cleared her throat and James leant forward to grab her cup of tea from the bedside cabinet. He handed it to her and she gave him a small smile in thanks. It was a bit chilly at this point — she could just cast a warming charm on it and heat it back up — but she honestly just couldn't be arsed.

And, really, it wasn't so terrible to just throw back the last dregs of slightly cold tea.

Well, alright, it was kind of terrible, but there was something about being laid up in a hospital bed because of recently sustained injuries that put those sorts of things in perspective.

James took the empty cup from her hand, raising his eyebrows at her when she started to protest that _I can do it, James, for god's sake, _and set it back onto her bedside cabinet.

She sighed and shook her head at him, the smile tugging at the corner of her lips for a moment before she sobered.

'Anyway.' She cleared her throat again. 'We spent the month prior to the raid going into smaller houses and gathering any additional information we could. And, I have to admit, I was sceptical about Moody's strategy at first, but it really did help smoke out some people that, until recently, were only rumoured to be participating. Well, we _knew_, but we didn't have any solid evidence.

'We raided Aftdown on the 20th of August. And I don't — I don't remember _everything _from that night firsthand, so some of this is what I've since had reported to me by Moody and Longbottom. Longbottom, by the way,' Lily shook her head. 'He's a fucking genius. A _genius_. And just — he's a brilliant leader. It was an honour getting to work with him.'

She was quiet for a minute, giving James room to say… she didn't know what, _something, _but he sat there silently, just holding her hand. After a moment, she took a deep breath and began again.

'We went in around 1900 — they were having a meeting, actually, so the place was packed. We had ten Aurors on the raid, but there were thirty people there. We were helped by the fact that we put up anti-Apparition jinxes — spells that keep people from spontaneously disappearing,' Lily clarified. 'And we went in and were able to almost immediately Stun ten people and get them out of the way, but it was still something of a fight.'

James frowned at her. 'Why didn't you take more people?'

She shrugged one shoulder and then immediately regretted it as pain radiated down her arm. She grimaced and James immediately moved his hand from hers. 'What's wrong?'

She shook her head and gritted her teeth as she reached out and took his hand again. His hand curled a bit hesitantly around hers, but he tightened his grip once she squeezed his hand. 'I just moved my shoulder in a way I shouldn't've done,' she said, her teeth still gritted. 'It's settling down, but —' Another shock of pain spread through her arm and she gripped James' hand harder. '_Fuck, _it hurts.'

'Do you need me to call someone? A nurse or doctor or?'

Lily shook her head. 'The healers are busy. I'm alright, I just need to relax into it.'

'Lily —'

'James,' she flicked her eyes up to his, her tone was a bit sharper than she intended. She took a breath and consciously relaxed. 'I'm fine.' Her voice was softer this time, calmer. Kinder. 'Seriously.'

James held her gaze for a moment before he nodded. 'Okay.' He paused for a beat before he said, 'So, you went in, immediately stunned a few people and then, presumably, all hell broke loose?'

Lily chuckled. 'It's like you were there.'

James grinned, but it wasn't his usually bright, easy smile — it was slightly strained, a little stressed, and she squeezed his hand, brushing her thumb along the back of his knuckles.

'We'd arrested a fair few of them, maybe half,' she said, her eyes floating to the ceiling as she tried to remember, 'before they realised I was there. I became, as you can imagine, something of a target.'

She looked back down at James and frowned at the look on his face. 'I wasn't immediately knocked cold,' she said, attempting a smile, 'because I'm not _so _far out of my training that I've completely forgotten how to conduct myself, but it was an embarrassingly short amount of time afterwards. In my opinion, anyway.'

'What'd they get you with?'

Lily went to shrug but she caught herself just in time. 'Not sure. Marlene —'

James furrowed his eyebrows, a look of surprise on his face. 'Your friend from school?'

Lily smiled and nodded. 'Yeah. She's a healer and, of course, she's my healer right now. But anyway, we have no idea what hit me. Marlene and her trainee healers have run every test they can think of, and they still aren't sure what it was that they hit me with.

'It's likely that it was a cocktail of things,' Lily said. 'The effects became intermingled and then it can be hard to parse the spells. It's easier with potions because you can separate the ingredients and while you can do that to _some _degree with the body…. It's just a more complex system. Especially because every body responds differently to spells, even if it's just a subtle difference.'

James nodded slowly and hummed. 'That makes sense. But they're still able to treat you?'

'Mhmm. I have to take a cocktail of things because they want to make sure they're addressing every possible issue, but it's not so bad. The taste is bloody horrible, but I'll take it if it means I get to leave this damn bed soon.'

James breathed a laugh and shook his head at her just slightly. 'You're… so _you._'

Lily grinned. 'No other way to be, is there?'

James tipped his head at her, his smile widening just a touch. 'I guess that's true.'

They were quiet for a beat before James' expression settled and he looked at her seriously again. 'But you arrested them all? Is this….'

He trailed off like he didn't want to say it, but Lily wasn't afraid to voice it. 'Over? Yeah,' she nodded, the weight in her voice contrasting sharply with the deeply elated feeling in her chest. 'We've got trials and sentencing and so, you know, from that standpoint, we'll still be dealing with this for a while. And there will probably be some mild fall out — stragglers, all that sort of stuff — but we got the central group. Malfoy, Nott, Avery, LeStrange's younger brother… we got them all.'

James exhaled heavily and Lily felt it, the weight he'd been carrying since he came into office eighteen months ago, she felt it lift up off his shoulders. And she knew how miraculous it was, that feeling, and she inhaled, a soft smile spreading across her face.

'We couldn't've done it without you,' she said. She ran her thumb along his knuckles again. 'You were invaluable, James, really.'

James shook his head. 'Lily, it — it was all you.'

'Alright, it was both of us.'

James laughed as he leaned forward, his gaze flicking down to check that he wasn't pressing against her in any way that might hurt her. He rested his forehead briefly against hers, his smile bright in her eyes, and nodded just slightly.

'Alright,' he said, his lips brushing against hers, 'it was both of us.'

* * *

**See you tomorrow! x**


	21. Chapter 21

**This is? the last chapter? before the epilogue?**

**HOW ARE WE HERE ALREADY?!**

**I hope you all have a great week (and I swear I'll reply to comments, probably tomorrow. This weekend totally got away from me. SIGH)**

* * *

Lily was in the hospital for another few days after James came to visit. She'd healed rapidly, the healers said, faster than they'd been expecting. Marlene had laughed and said that _she knew exactly why the Minister had healed so quickly_, but Lily had just muttered for her to _piss off, please, before she started any unnecessary rumours_.

'They hardly count as rumours,' Marlene'd said, as she measured out Lily's set of potions for the morning, 'when they're very obviously true.'

Lily had frowned at her then, but Marlene had just laughed brightly and ruffled Lily's hair. 'Don't worry, love,' she'd said, grinning. 'Your secret's safe with me.'

The secret being the fact that James had slept in the chair beside her bed, his head resting beside her thigh, every night since he'd found out she was in hospital.

And she knew he probably shouldn't have done it, knew that Marlene wasn't the only one who, now, was going to be full of all sorts of ideas, but did it really bother her if people had ideas about her and James?

Because, really, like Marlene said. It wasn't like they were getting the _wrong _idea.

That was especially true given the fact that now, a few weeks on, they were lying completely naked in his bed.

It was early in the morning, earlier than she'd intended to wake up by far, but she was more than used to her body kickstarting her brain before she was ready. Normally, she might've gotten up out of bed, made herself a cuppa and found something to do, but this morning, she was keen to just enjoy her time in bed.

It was practice. Preparation for the sort of life she was ready to start leading.

And even if she'd had a pile of work to do this morning, she wouldn't have wanted to drag herself out of bed. Not with James looking the way he did.

The duvet was tucked nearly all the way up under his chin — only his head and the arm he had thrown out over the side of the bed was visible — and she liked how, to anyone looking from the outside, innocent it all might have looked. How the duvet, wrapped around them like that, created one more little bubble between them and the universe, so they couldn't see the way Lily'd fitted herself into his side, couldn't see James' hand resting, warm, against her lower back.

James stirred and Lily buried her face back in his chest, breathing in the smell of his skin. He smelled like warm spices and the woods and it was _home,_ and Lily couldn't get enough, couldn't stop her heart hammering violently inside her chest when she was with him like this.

He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her closer against him.

'Evans.' His voice was deep and scratchy from sleep, and Lily lifted her face off his chest to look at him.

'Yes, James?' She pressed herself up and began peppering light kisses across his jaw. James wrapped his arms around her and pulled her on top of him.

'I'm cold,' he said, his hot breath tickling her ear. 'Can you cast a warming charm or something?'

She laughed. 'Nope. My wand's in the lounge.'

James groaned, his chest vibrating against hers. 'Why's it there?'

She cocked an eyebrow at him. 'It was in my blazer when you stripped it off me last night. And I was a bit preoccupied, so I didn't bother getting it.'

He groaned. 'How am I going to warm myself up, then?'

'I'm sure you'll find a way,' she whispered and James smirked. He grasped her hips and flipped them so that he was hovering over her and Lily laughed, the bright, happy sound filling the room. He leaned over and grabbed his glasses off the bedside cabinet – he popped the glasses onto his face and sat up on his heels, pulling the blanket up off them.

Lily shrieked against the sudden blast of cool air. 'James, bloody hell, what are you doing?'

'I just wanted to look at you.' She half expected that his eyes would flick over her again, but his gaze held firm. 'You're beautiful.' He smiled, then, and Lily couldn't help but match his expression.

'I am stunning, aren't I?' she said, grinning. 'You're so lucky to have me.'

She thought he might laugh, shake his head at her cheek, but he just nodded slowly, his eyes on hers.

'I am,' he said. 'I really bloody am.'

Lily reached up and tangled her fingers into his hair and pulled his mouth down to hers. James groaned and let his weight fall down onto his forearms, pressing Lily down into the mattress. And she loved the way his body felt against hers, the way her curves fit easily, perfectly, against the sharp angles of his body. They were like two puzzle pieces that shouldn't fit – the fact that they did made it all the more glorious.

James moved his mouth from hers and traced his tongue down her neck, making Lily shiver. He smiled against her collarbone before pressing kisses and tiny bites into her skin, moving slowly down her chest.

'James.' Lily arched against him, frustrated already because he'd worked her up in record time, and he just chuckled, his warm breath blowing across her breast.

'Yes?'

'Are you enjoying torturing me?'

'Hmm.' He trailed his fingers along her inner thigh, so close to where she wanted him, and lifted his head up to take in her expression. He grinned at her then, a massively silly grin, and inched his fingers a bit further up her thigh.

'Yeah,' he said, and then he brushed his fingers against her and Lily pushed her head back into the pillow and moaned. 'I'm quite enjoying it.'

She let him tease her for a few more minutes, his fingers sliding over her, her breath coming in shorter and sharper points, before she reached up between them and pressed him up and off her.

James rolled over onto the pillow beside he and had just opened his mouth to say something when Lily sat up and swung her leg over his waist. James' hands immediately went to her waist.

'Oh. You want to be on top, eh?'

Lily opted not to reply. She took James' hands in hers and pinned them up over his head. He sucked in a sharp breath and Lily knew her smirk was a little cocky just then, but _god _if it didn't give her a rush. And by the way James was looking at her — pupils blown wide, the desire etched across his face….

It clearly gave James something of a rush, too.

She took his wrists in one hand and leant over to grab a condom out of James' bedside drawer.

'Leave these here.' She tapped his wrists with her hand and, when he nodded, Lily lean back, tore open the condom wrapper, and rolled it onto him.

By the time they pulled themselves out of bed a few hours later, the sun was properly up and, more pressingly, they'd nearly run out of time to get ready.

'Fuck,' Lily practically fell out of bed because one of her feet was tangled in the bedclothes. 'We're going to be so late.'

James laughed and shook his head at her. 'We are not. We've got an hour. And it's not far from here, right?'

'Uh, no, not far.' Lily shook off the duvet and darted across James' room into the bathroom. 'I'm going to shower. You've got towels, right?'

She barely heard James' amused, 'Yes,' before she switched on the shower and damn near threw herself under the still too-cold spray.

She took the fastest shower she could manage — it was little more than washing her hair and running her hands over her body and calling herself clean — and wrapped a towel haphazardly around herself before she nudged the door open further to let James know it was his turn.

He sauntered in there, his slow pace nearly driving Lily out of her skull, but then he rested his hand on her hip, ghosted a kiss along the back of her neck, and Lily felt the tension in her shoulders start to fall away.

'We'll get there,' he said. He squeezed her hip and pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. 'We'll be fine.'

Lily unscrewed the lid off her moisturiser and dotted a few spots around her face. 'You sure?'

James nodded and patted her hip before he straightened and turned the shower back on.

'Positive. I hate being late as much as you do, and I'm not even remotely worried about it.'

'Maybe you're still in too much of a sex fog to give it the proper amount of worry.'

James' laugh echoed off the bathroom walls and Lily smiled at her reflection in the mirror.

True to James' word, though, they were out of the house with more than enough time. It had taken a bit of finagling with his security — Calvin, the guard on duty that morning, was not at all keen on the idea of James leaving the house without a clearly detailed itinerary — but James had begged and Lily had stood serenely by and smiled and they finally wore Cal down enough to convince him that a few hours — 'a little brunch date,' according to James — would, perhaps, be quite alright.

Cal had seemed a little more sceptical when Lily asked him to pull off to the side on a street that was a few blocks off the main road, and, thus, all the places she and James could conceivably have been having breakfast, but, thankfully, Cal decided not to push it.

'Why've we got to go out anyway?' James asked quietly as Cal slowed to a stop. 'You always come in and out of my office.'

'I'm not sure you'll be able to do that,' Lily said as she opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement. 'Theoretically, I don't see why it would be a problem, but I'd really rather not find out that I'm wrong and you get burnt to a crisp.'

James cringed and shut the door behind them. 'That does sound unpleasant.'

Lily snorted and, after pausing for a moment to orient herself, started down the street. The telephone box she was looking for was down a ways, and though she was sure that Cal was on edge watching her take James down a dark, dank alley, he didn't make any moves, that Lily could see, to get out of the car and follow them.

'Here we are.' Lily smiled at him as she slid open the door of the telephone box and James looked at her sceptically, looking back at the overflowing skip behind them, before he stepped inside.

'We've got to take the visitor's entrance,' she said in way of explanation, stepping in behind him and pulling the door closed. 'I'm not sure you'd be able to get in any other way.'

'What are the other ways in?'

She lifted the phone off the receiver and dialled the code. 'Toilets, mainly. Otherwise, you can Floo into the Atrium. But I can Floo directly into my office, as can Remus and a few others. '

'Well, aren't you fancy.'

Lily laughed as she hung up the phone and the cool voice of the announcer flooded through the booth. 'Welcome to the Ministry of Magic. Please state your name and business.'

'Lily Evans,' Lily said, smiling at the shocked look on James' face, 'Minister for Magic. And James Potter, Prime Minister. We're here for the Order of Merlin award ceremony.'

'Thank you,' the voice said. 'Visitor, please take the badge and attach it to the front of your robes.' There was a plastic-sounding clatter, and Lily slid her finger into the coin slot and pulled out James' badge. She glanced down at it (_James Potter, Award Ceremony) _before she handed it over to James and he pinned it to the front of his shirt with slightly fumbling fingers.

He'd just finished pinning his badge when the phone booth started shaking and sliding down through the ground. James made a shocked sound, his eyes wide as the windows started going dark.

'What the fuck is happening?'

Lily reached out and took his hand. 'We're going to the Ministry.'

'This is normal?!'

Lily nodded and bit her lip to hide her smile. 'This is absolutely normal.'

The announcer's voice was cool and calm when she spoke again, a stark contrast to James' mild terror. 'Visitor to the Ministry, you are required to submit to a search and present your wand for registration at the security desk, which is located at the end of the Atrium.'

James raised his eyebrow at her. 'I haven't got a wand.'

Lily waved her hand at him. 'You're with me anyway. You're fine.'

'Oh, am I?' James' mouth quirked up into a smirk that was quickly lost when the phone booth shuttered to a halt and he had to catch the side to keep from falling forward. Lily snorted with laughter as the doors opened and the voice spoke again.

'The Ministry of Magic wishes you a pleasant day.'

The Atrium was bustling with people when they stepped out of the telephone booth. A few people did a double take when they realised she'd arrived through the visitor's entrance — their gazes flicking a few times between her and James, trying, probably, to figure out who he was — but most people just grinned at her and offered their congratulations before they sped off through the Atrium towards the lifts.

She turned to look up at James as they started through the black-tiled corridor, past the fireplaces on either side, and found him looking, wide-eyed, around at it all.

'What do you think?'

James' eyes flicked down to her for a moment before he resumed looking around. '_This _is where you come to work every day?'

She grinned and nodded, though she knew that he couldn't see her. 'Yeah. Brilliant, isn't it?'

'It really is.'

Lily waved at Colin, the wizard behind the security desk. He nodded at her, his gaze flicking to James, before he looked back down at the stack of paperwork on his desk. They continued through the crowd — they were on time, but, really, there was a reason that Lily almost never came into work through the Atrium, especially during peak rush — until they reached the large, golden fountain in the centre.

When Lily'd first started here — somehow over twenty years ago now — the fountain had been a depiction of "magical brethren", an all-powerful witch and wizard with other adoring beings around them...

It was a geometric statue now.

People hated her for it, but Lily hadn't bothered herself about it.

A large stage had been erected just behind the fountain, and, through the bustling crowd, Lily could see the rows and rows of chairs they'd set up in front for those attending the ceremony later that morning. Though they didn't have to be back up in the Atrium for another half hour, there were a few people already assembled — mostly reporters, Lily thought, based on the number of people with massive cameras dangling round their necks. Lily slid around the fountain towards the lifts, rustling around in her pocket, out of habit, and flicking in a galleon as she passed. She pressed the down button and turned to look up at James as she heard the distant clattering of the lift.

'We've got a bit of time,' she said, 'so I thought I'd bring you down to see my office.'

James' eyes brightened. 'Are you serious?'

She smiled at his enthusiasm and shrugged one shoulder. It still tinged a little bit when she moved it like that, but it was little more than an echo of the pain she'd had a few days previously. 'Why not. I've seen your office, after all. It's only fair.'

The lift doors slid open and a few people filed out, each of them saying 'hello' or 'congratulations' to Lily as they passed, before she and James stepped inside. She noticed someone, she couldn't quite tell who from this distance, pick up speed from the other side of the fountain, and Lily stuck her hand in the door to hold it open.

She smiled as Dirk Cresswell stepped inside the lift and selected level four.

'How're you, Dirk?'

Dirk turned and smiled at her, his eyes flicking, momentarily, to James. 'I'm great, Minister. How're you?'

'I'm well. This,' she turned and put her hand on James' elbow, 'is James Potter. He's the Prime Minister. James, this is Dirk Cresswell. He's the head of our Goblin Liaison Office.'

Dirk tilted his head at her curiously, his eyes lighting up just a bit with excitement. 'Prime Minister,' Dirk extended his hand and James took it. 'It's wonderful to meet you.'

James nodded his head. 'It's a pleasure to meet you as well, Mr Cresswell.'

'What do you think of the Ministry so far?'

James' gaze flickered towards Lily before he met Dirk's gaze again. 'It's brilliant.'

The three of them chatted politely until the lift doors opened on the fourth floor and, after the voice in the elevator stopped speaking — 'Level Four: Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, including the Beast, Being and Spirit Divisions and the Pest Advisory Bureau' — and Dirk promised that he'd see her at the ceremony later that morning, Dirk started off down the corridor towards his office. James turned to her as the door closed and the lift resumed rumbling down towards Level One.

'He's a nice bloke.'

Lily nodded. 'Yeah. We went to school together. We were in different houses and I didn't know him _too _well, but we were in N.E.W.T. Care of Magical Creatures together.'

James hummed. 'What'd you do in that class?'

'Patted and fed animals, mostly,' Lily said, smiling up at him. 'It wasn't my favourite class by any stretch of the imagination, but I liked it enough to continue into N.E.W.T., so.' She shrugged again.

James grinned at her. 'I think you would've continued anything on into N.E.W.T. just to say you did it.'

She laughed as the lift doors slid open and the voice in the lift announced, 'Level One: Minister for Magic and Support Staff.'

'You're not wrong,' Lily said, stepping out into the tiled corridor. 'Remus was always telling me that I should drop a few subjects, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.'

James raised his eyebrows at her. 'How many did you end up taking?'

Lily bit her lip in a failed attempt to hide her smile. 'Ten.'

'Ten?!'

They spent the next half an hour walking around her office — Lily introduced James to Sophie who was, hilariously, almost immediately charmed by him, especially when he started talking about how he'd 'heard so much about her and her amazing work' — and she let James wander around her office for a while, taking in the space she spent almost all her time in.

Though, she was spending less and less time there these days. It was still an absolutely absurd amount of time, but since they'd released her from the hospital almost a fortnight ago, she hadn't spent one single night in her office.

That had to be some sort of record.

Her office was still sparse — it was almost all reports and books and files and _work things _— but she watched him take in the few personal things she had.

Their notebook, which had its own home right near her elbow.

The collection of mugs on the windowsill that she'd brought from home, including her favourite mug that was, embarrassingly, stained beyond all belief.

She didn't have any photographs on her desk, but she hoped that she would. Soon.

They'd been chatting while James wandered around her office — Lily'd made them tea and he was walking around, clutching his mug, and pulling books off her shelves at random and flipping through them — but, as they got closer to ten, Lily felt herself start to get nervous again.

She wasn't — she didn't have any reason to be nervous.

She'd done crowds before.

This really wasn't that big of a deal.

But, still, the feeling in her gut intensified and, though James didn't say anything, he stopped her at her office door just as they were getting ready to go up and held her hand for a moment. He didn't say anything, but he squeezed her hand and stepped closer, leaning down to press his forehead to hers and that, that little bit of support —

That was what she needed.

She pressed herself up onto her toes and brushed her lips against his, and she felt James smile against her mouth before she pulled back and, after taking another deep breath, opened the door and started back down the corridor.

The Atrium was packed when she and James stepped off the lift a few minutes later. Sophie immediately swept over from — well, Lily hadn't seen where, and escorted James off to his reserved seat in the front of the crowd. He brushed his fingers lightly against Lily's as he walked away and the warmth in his gaze, the stability —

It kept her going as she turned on her heel and started along the seating area. Kept her upright as she climbed up onto the stage and stood on the small dot of Spellotape they'd placed on the ground.

She looked out into the crowd in front of her and her eyes, immediately, found James'. He was sitting directly in front of her, his smile blindingly bright, and Lily could feel the happiness, the pride, absolutely radiating off him. It warmed her skin, settled in her gut and made it hard to breathe in the best way —

She turned and looked at Frank now standing beside her. He'd been looking at his wife, Alice, over in the reporter pit, but he turned when he felt Lily's eyes on him and leaned over so he could whisper to her.

'Ready, Minister?'

She breathed a laugh. 'Not even a little bit, Longbottom. You?'

He grinned and shook his head. 'I'm going to weep like a baby up there.'

Lily laughed again. 'That makes two of us.'

The crowd began to fall silent and Lily turned just slightly to see Remus walking up onto the stage, a stack of papers in his hand. He caught Lily's eye as he moved to stand behind the podium and he flashed her a bright smile before he pulled his wand out of his jacket pocket and tapped the magical microphone in front of him.

'Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Remus Lupin, the senior undersecretary to Minister Evans. The Minister would like to be here presenting these awards today, but unfortunately, she's currently fulfilling another engagement.'

The crowd laughed and Lily bit the corner of her lip and shook her head. Remus cast her a quick grin before he continued.

'I am beyond honoured to be standing in the presence of such amazing people today. I am even more honoured to call them both my colleagues and my friends. Lily Evans and Frank Longbottom have devoted their lives to serving the Ministry of Magic and the wider magical community, and we, as a government and as a people, are better for their leadership, their guidance, and their dedication.

'The last few years have, as I'm sure we'll all agree, been incredibly difficult. For those of us within the magical community, but, perhaps even moreso, for those outside the magical community.' Remus looked to James, and James tipped his head at him in acknowledgement.

'I cannot more strongly condemn the actions of those pureblood terrorists who made it their mission to kill as many non-magical people and Muggleborn people as possible. Their actions were bigoted, grounded in a hatred that has no place in our society. Lily Evans and Frank Longbottom are being honoured here today because of their dedication to eradicating that hatred. In the face of terrible challenges, they were brave, thoughtful, and driven, single-mindedly focused on creating a community where everyone — _everyone_ — would be welcomed and supported.'

Remus turned and looked at them both again, his expression softer, warmer than a few minutes before. 'I am profoundly indebted to both of them. We all are.'

Remus held his gaze for a moment before he turned back to the crowd at large. 'I'm sure you know something of their stories, but, if you'll indulge me for a moment, I'd like to give a bit of colour to the people standing before you today. We'll begin,' Remus gestured towards her, 'with the Minister herself.

'Lily Evans has, by every measure, had a most extraordinary career.' Remus cast her a brief look then, and he'd barely started but Lily was already in bloody tears —

She breathed a laugh and sniffed quietly, blinking up towards the ceiling in an attempt to quell them. Remus smiled softly at her before he turned back to the crowd.

'She graduated from Hogwarts as Head Girl with a truly impressive number of N.E.W.T.S. Though, if you'd asked me to give this speech in our seventh year, I would have told you that Lily was doing an "utterly ridiculous number of N.E.W.T.S. and she really, _really _needed to get some more sleep".'

Lily laughed and Remus looked over and caught her eye again. _It's true, _she mouthed, and Remus' smile widened.

'After leaving Hogwarts in 1997, Lily joined the Auror Office. She was, in the words of Alastor Moody, "one of the best, most intuitive recruits he's ever seen". She served as Head of the Auror Office from 2005 to 2011 before she was promoted to serve as the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the position she held in 2016 when she was elected Minister for Magic.

'Lily's record speaks for itself. She is a driven, dedicated person, willing to do whatever she can to ensure that those threatening our community are brought to justice, and she is always, _always, _willing to stand up for what she believes in. She has a tenure of service that, alone, would qualify her for this award today. But Lily's work is all the more impressive when we acknowledge the fact that, throughout her career, she has been tasked with confronting people who were actively seeking to eliminate her from our community.'

Lily swallowed hard and her eyes found James in the crowd again.

'Lily entered Hogwarts in 1990, a time that, as most of you will recall, was the beginning of much conversation in the wizarding world about whether or not Muggleborn students should be allowed to attend the school. Lily, unaware, as she was, of these conversations, didn't hesitate to prove herself, and she was immediately recognised as a standout student in her year. In the words of her Professors, she was, and remains, "incredibly talented", "vivacious", and "singularly brilliant". It was those traits, along with her kind heart and her willingness, always, to go out of her way to help others, that made her an excellent Prefect and, later, an even better Head Girl. But it wasn't long into her career at Hogwarts when Lily was made aware, quite shockingly, of the wizarding world's attitudes towards her.'

She saw Remus cast her a look out of the corner of her eye, but Lily didn't pull her eyes from James'.

'I won't go into detail about those events here — suffice it to say that Lily was keenly aware, especially after our fifth year, that there were people within her new community that sought to ensure she was, at best, unwelcome.

'Those sentiments increased throughout our time at Hogwarts, especially as the group that supported LeStrange's efforts in the late nineties began to gain power and move their attacks against Muggleborns and non-magical folks out into the open. I remember walking through the corridors with Lily and hearing some of the things that people would jeer at her, but, more vividly, I remember the way Lily held her head high in spite of them. She was firm in her belief in herself, in her sense of belonging to this world, and she never, not once, wavered. And I don't think I've ever told her how much I admire that in her.'

Lily turned to look at Remus then and found him looking at her. 'I admire that so much, Lily.'

Lily offered him a shaky smile before she reached up and flicked a tear off her cheek.

'Lily was the first ever Muggleborn to be offered a position as an Auror, and she moved into the Auror Office just as investigations into LeStrange's crimes were becoming even more serious. She spent the first three years of her career as an Auror investigating and arresting people who made it quite plain, both in public and personally, often across the interview table, that they wouldn't hesitate to kill her given the chance.

'And that kind of constant confrontation, the incessant reminder that people — your colleagues, people on the street, people in your community — would rather see you dead than see you with a wand, is enough to make anyone bitter. To alienate even the strongest against the world in which they'd found themselves at home. But Lily always saw the threat as something that extended beyond herself — she felt a duty to her fellow Muggleborns, to the non-magical community, and that duty drove her to do what she could to ensure that anyone who spouted that sort of bigotry was arrested and tried.

'But despite her obvious skill, there were still people within the Ministry that questioned her. Questioned her loyalty. Her ability.' The heat was clear in Remus' voice now, and though Lily knew that the petty side of Remus would love to start naming names, she was also certain — fairly certain — that he wouldn't.

'But even then, Lily never hesitated. She continued to prove herself, to work harder, to achieve more. She was the youngest ever Head of the Auror Office, the first Muggleborn to head the Office, and, later, the youngest and first Muggleborn to Head the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. She missed out on youngest Minister for Magic,' Remus said, shooting Lily a grin, 'because she tied with Ottaline Gambol, but she can still claim first Muggleborn.'

The crowd laughed appreciatively at Remus' move to lighten the mood and Lily shook her head at him, a smile spreading across her face.

'Anyone who has watched Lily's career as I have can say unequivocally how lucky we are to have had her serve our community. There is no one who would have been better suited to lead us through the last four years, no one who would have been willing to put so much on the line to ensure that we, all of us, could have a better life. I am honoured, beyond honoured, to be here today and to be able to present Lily Evans, my dear friend, with the Order of Merlin, First Class in recognition of her services to the wizarding world. Lily,' Remus lifted a velvet box from within the podium and turned towards her, 'if you're ready?'

Lily smiled, nodding in spite of the tears that were now positively rolling down her face. Remus opened the box and moved to stand behind her, and Lily turned her gaze, once again, to catch James' eye.

He was smiling, beaming, and she could feel the intensity of it even from up here on the stage and —

She felt Remus behind her and saw his hands move forward out of the corner of her eye. He laid the medal around her neck, his fingers fumbling a bit at the back as he fastened it. Her hand moved up immediately to finger the medal and Remus leant forward to whisper, 'Congratulations, Lils. You _so _deserve it.'

The rest of the ceremony was something of a blur.

She stepped to the side and listened attentively as Remus sang Frank's praises — his groundbreaking time in the Auror Office, his revolutionary proposals in the way of investigating and prosecuting crime, his work across the Ministry on a number of committees — and she watched, her gaze flicking between Frank (who, true to his word, had tears streaking down his cheeks as he received the award) and his wife, Alice, who looked a bit more composed than her husband, but only just.

Remus announced the celebratory reception — Lily barely heard him, but the sudden restlessness of the crowd keyed her in — and Lily turned to Frank and extended her hand.

'Congratulations, Frank,' she said, shaking his hand and grinning at him. 'You're absolutely incredible.'

Frank smiled back at her, squeezing her hand just slightly before he dropped it. 'Right back at you, Minister.'

Frank turned and made his way down off the stage and, after turning to see what Remus was doing, Lily followed in Frank's footsteps. She stepped down from the stage, the medal heavy around her neck, the metal cold against her skin, and she felt James' eyes on her as she moved, felt him watching her as she started to slide through the crowd towards him.

And she knew they were being watched — between the loud, rapid clicking of the cameras around them and the puffs of purple smoke and the reporters shouting questions — she knew they weren't alone, but right now, this lightness in her chest and this incredible feeling in her gut —

Right now, it was just them.

She moved as swiftly as she could manage through the crowd, shaking hands and saying, 'Thank you,' over and over again, and, when she finally reached him, she reached out and took James' hand.

His eyes flicked down to their hands for a moment, an expression on his face she couldn't quite read before he met her eyes again. And the look in them — warm and fierce and proud and full, absolutely full to the brim, with love —

She could not handle the look in his eyes. It went straight through her.

James squeezed her hand and stepped forward, close enough that she could hear him over the cameras when he spoke but not so close that they looked, to anyone outside them, like they were necessarily more than colleagues.

'How do you feel?'

Lily grinned and stepped forward, resting her free hand on his chest. 'Absolutely indescribable.'

She slid her hand up over his chest, the side of his neck, before she laced her fingers through the hair at the base of his neck.

James raised an eyebrow at her as he slid closer, dropping his free hand onto her hip and pulling her to him until there was barely more than a breath of space between them. 'Oh, yeah?'

Lily nodded and pressed herself up onto her toes. 'Yeah,' she said, her lips brushing against his. 'I feel pretty fucking great.'

And even though she knew they were surrounded by cameras — cameras that were, now, all pointed in her direction and clicking even more madly than they were just a few moments before — everything in that moment, everything besides James and his hand on her hip and his fingers threaded through hers and the cold metal of her Order of Merlin against her skin, it all fell away.

And so even though she knew that these pictures would, probably, find their way across the pages of the _Prophet _tomorrow, Lily closed the remaining distance between them and kissed him.

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**See you all next Saturday with the last little bit. I hope you have a stunning week x**


	22. Chapter 22

**Here we are, at the end of another fic! Thank you so much - _so much _\- to everyone who has been reading along and sending me the most glorious comments as this story has been going up. Each and every comment has meant the world to me and I love you all.**

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'"_Arthur Weasley is the Best Candidate for Minister for Magic", says Minister Evans_

_After her shocking announcement in January that she didn't intend to stand again for the Minister's Office, the outgoing Minister for Magic has officially weighed in on the upcoming election in an interview with _Daily Prophet _political columnist, Alice Longbottom._

_Lily Evans, Order of Merlin First Class, has been serving as Minister for Magic since 2016 and, despite immense popular support, decided not to stand for her third re-election this spring. The decision not to stand was 'motivated by a number of factors' — the Minister has cited her interest in serving in other capacities in past interviews, but noted this week that she 'just feel[s] that the time has come for [her] to leave the role'._

'_I've been Minister for ten years now,' she said. 'It's time I pass the position on to someone else whose leadership I believe in._

'_And,' she joked, 'I'm more than ready to start catching up on my sleep.'_

_The Minister's husband and the current Muggle Prime Minister, James Potter, was quick to express his jealousy at his wife's new, less stressful future. _

'_It's really going to feel like torture when I'm stuck inside on the weekend reading reports and she and Harry [their son, 3] are running around London,' he said, laughing. _

_The Minister has, until now, stayed silent about who she thinks should fill that role. 'I was keen to wait and see who emerged for the race before I set my opinion,' she said. But now that all the candidates have declared, she says that she 'must, without a doubt, support Arthur Weasley' for the top job._

'_Arthur was pivotal five years ago when we were dealing with our most recent, and hopefully last, group of pureblood terrorists. He advocated for and oversaw the implementation of groundbreaking Muggle relations policies in the aftermath and he was a key part in our investigations into these crimes. I can't think of anyone better to lead us into the next stage of our growth as a community.'_

_Arthur Weasley has worked at the Ministry of Magic since he left Hogwarts in 1987, beginning his career in what was then called the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office. In 2005, Arthur was promoted to the Muggle Liaison Office, where he's spent the remainder of his career. _

_The Muggle Liaison Office, initially a small, underfunded department, grew in size, scope, and authority under Lily Evans' government._

'_It was obviously a time where improved Muggle relations was of the utmost importance, and I don't think we could have had anyone better than Arthur heading that Department during such a difficult time,' Minister Evans said._

_Arthur Weasley was attacked in June 2020, during the period of pureblood terrorism, for his support of Muggleborns and the wider Muggle community. His support for those communities is one of the enduring characteristics of his career and the wizarding world's relationship with those groups is central to Arthur Weasley's campaign for Minister. 'We must build stronger bonds with our non-magical neighbours,' he said at a campaign event last week. 'We've made a lot of progress in the last five years, but it is of the utmost importance that we continue to take these relationships seriously and that we do what we can to maintain them.'_

_The Minister says that this attitude is what's drawn her to Arthur Weasley's candidacy. 'Arthur is an amazing person — he's a loving husband and father, and he's dedicated his life to advocating for justice in the Ministry. But, more than anything else, I've decided to vote for him because of his vision for the future._

'_Arthur sees a bright future for us all. I say it's time we put him in the Minister's Office so he can take us there.'_

_Elections will be held on the 7th of May. If you wish to file your ballot by owl, the last date to submit your request is the 2nd of May._

Lily set the paper down onto her lap, pushed her reading glasses up into her hair, and turned to smile at James.

'Not bad, eh?'

James leant over and pressed a kiss to her temple. 'Not bad at all.'

Lily held his gaze for a moment before she turned back to the paper, her eyes scanning over the next article. James watched her quietly for a minute — the soft wrinkle in her brow as she read, her tiny frown whenever she read something she wasn't sure about — before he reached over and rested his hand over hers on the duvet.

'You alright?'

She nodded, a small smile stretching across her face as she turned to look at him. 'Yeah. It'll be weird, I think, not being Minister anymore, but I'm excited to breathe again. And Arthur will be brilliant.'

'Yeah,' James nodded, 'he will be. I can't wait to work with him.'

Lily's smile widened. 'I'm not sure how I feel about the new Minister not even having to introduce themselves to you, though.'

James laughed. 'You can always go downstairs and set my desk on fire again if it really bothers you.'

Lily beamed. 'God, the look on your face that night. That's still one of the funniest things I've ever seen.'

'Oh yeah?' James leant over towards her and he watched as Lily's eyes darkened just a touch.

She bit the corner of her lip and nodded. 'Absolutely.'

James shook his head. 'You're so mean to me.'

Lily laughed then, and James grinned before he leant forward and kissed her, once, twice, his hand moving up so he could slide his fingers through her hair and —

There was a little knock on the door and James pulled back, resting his forehead briefly on hers before he turned towards the door. 'Come in!'

It took him a few tries — their doorknob was, actually, very difficult to turn (something that had saved them on more than a few occasions) — but after a few seconds, their messy-haired son pushed open the door and, when he spotted them sitting up in bed, beamed. 'Good morning!'

Harry streaked across the room and, after a few failed attempts, scrambled up the side of their bed and plopped himself between them. 'Mummy,' Harry reached over and put his hand on the newspaper on her lap, 'Mummy, is this the one with the pictures?'

Lily smiled at James for a moment longer before her eyes flicked down to Harry. 'It is. Would you like to look at it?'

Harry nodded and slid the paper off her lap and onto his own. He looked down at the paper for a minute, his eyes bright as they skimmed the many, _many _moving pictures, before he looked back up at Lily. 'Where's quidditch?'

Lily laughed and ruffled his hair. 'It's at the back, love, see?' She turned towards the back of the paper and pointed. 'Here you go. The Holyhead Harpies beat the Tutshill Tornados 450 to 100.'

Harry's eyes went wide as he slid the paper forward on his lap and leant over to study the picture. 'That's a lot!'

Lily nodded. 'That is a lot. But the Harpies are very good.'

'How're they so good?'

'Lots and lots of practice.'

James watched, a soft smile stretching across his face, as Harry slid closer into Lily's side. Harry lifted the paper, a bit awkwardly because it was too big for his little hands, and positioned it so that it was resting somewhat evenly between him and Lily.

'Can you read?'

Lily must have felt James' eyes on her because she looked up and, when she caught his eye, smiled. And everything, _everything_, was contained in that smile — love and warmth and happiness — and James felt breathless just looking at her. Looking at her, her beautiful smile and the way she glowed in the soft morning light and the easy way she was with Harry, _their son_, and her patience and brilliance and —

He was still in awe of her. Every single day.

She leant over, careful not to squish Harry, and pressed a light, lingering kiss to James' lips before she pulled back, slid her glasses out of her hair, and smoothed out the paper on her lap.

'_The Holyhead Harpies showed once again last night why they are the team to beat in the league this year…._

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